Working towards a healthier Philippines

MANILA, Philippines - Living a healthy life follows a two-fold path: learning about good health practices and pursuing a lifestyle that makes the most of this knowledge. There is no replacement for good education in pursuing the former, and it is in this spirit that the Health and Education Reform Order (HERO) was implemented by the Philippine government.

The Meralco Development Center (MMLDC), in line with its advocacy for safety and wellness practices, is working in tandem with the government and the proponents of the HERO program to make it more accessible and more effective. 

“MMLDC got into this because we value any effort to enhance the learning of the students,” says Amor Curaming, MMLDC’s Academic Services associate director. “Since safety and wellness are part of our advocacy, we want to help improve the health practices of the students.”

HERO was designed by the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP) to ensure the prevention of common diseases through the inclusion of an effective and efficient public health awareness campaign in the Philippine educational system.

When PCP conceptualized HERO, they put together a project where the member-physicians designed modules that focused on their individual specializations. All of the modules created by the PCP are currently available via a distributable CD. However, these need to be translated to simpler teaching modules, which are appropriate to the different elementary and high-school levels. This is where MMLDC seeks to help.

“MMLDC believes that in order for the material to be even more effective and more readily understood by students across all levels, there must be a supporting structure and plan regarding how to use it. Aside from helping teachers in that respect, MMLDC also wants to help revise the material to make it more accessible to primary and secondary students. In partnership with DepEd and the PCP, MMLDC came up with a project to pursue that goal: the Health Education Instructional Materials Enhancement Project,” adds Curaming.

This project will come up with two outputs, which will support the teaching modules: a teaching flipchart and an implementation handbook. MMLDC is producing both of these items, in numbers sufficient for the pilot run. The flipcharts are meant for offline use, for schools and teachers who may not have access to projector systems or computers. The handbooks, in turn, are intended to guide teachers to plan their classes in tandem with the modules.

MMLDC is piloting the material with 10 schools, and following them up in a one-year evaluative study. If the pilot program proves successful with promising results, the DepEd will officially adopt and endorse the enhanced HERO system for national use. Curaming believes that this is the best way to expand the exposure and use of the HERO modules in schools. “If we have the official endorsement of the DepEd, then that will really help what we’re doing. While it’s true that any teacher and any school can use the original HERO material if they want, having a standardized system that has official backing can reach and help more schools and students.”

The PCP and DepEd officials involved in the pilot project, along with MMLDC personnel, will be conducting health profiling in each school. The evaluations are meant to assess not just the teachers, but the health practices of the students as well.

MMLDC, celebrating its 10th year, has education as one of its main advocacies. The HERO enhancement project is another major step in the right direction, and just one of many more to come.

For more information on MMLDC’s academic services, call 632-8111 local 700; e-mail mamcuraming@mmldc.org or visit the website at www.mmldc.org.