Health Educators: Change Agents or Techno/Peasants?

Abstract

Technology has become such a potent force in industrialized society that it influences virtually every aspect of our daily lives. Electronics, energy and genetic engineering are having major effects on society and the individual. Yet the role of technology in health largely has been ignored in public health literature, research and training. Health education has a valuable part to play in the process of this technological application but health educators need to become better informed about the nature of current technologies and their accompanying social issues. They also need to learn how to apply new technology to their profession. The question is whether the change agents to the future will be the educators, organizers, activists and human helpers who have trained for the task of fostering social and individual change or the technocrats who change our social fabric almost inadvertently in the process of inventing a more competitive microchip or mutant bacterium?