National Health Education Week 2007
October 15-20, 2007

Since 1995, National Health Education Week (NHEW) has been celebrated annually during the third week of October. This celebration focuses national attention on a major public health problem, provides public education on the issue, and improves consumers' understanding of the role of health education in promoting overall health.

NHEW 2007 focused on environmental health. In an attempt to further promote the importance of environmental health, SOPHE expanded NHEW 2007 from one week to a year-long environmental health campaign, entitled Finding the Key: Healthier Homes and Communities. The campaign was designed with quarterly efforts focusing on sub-themes that highlighted specific areas of environmental health.

These sub-themes included:

• An overview and introduction to environmental health and environmental health literacy (Oct.-Dec. '07)
• A focus on children and the elderly as sub-populations that may be more susceptible to environmental health risks (Jan.-March '08)
• A look at how our built environment impacts a variety of public health outcomes (April-June '08)
• An overview of how the environment influences infectious diseases, including a variety of water-borne, food-borne, and vector-borne diseases (July-Sept. '08)

In an effort to support health education campaigns that address an array of important environmental health issues, SOPHE developed the National Health Education Week Planning Guide 2007. This practical guide was designed to help individuals, organizations, and communities develop campaigns that recognize, promote, and encourage healthy behaviors in regards to environmental health.

In addition to the activities described in the guide, SOPHE encouraged the added creativity of the campaign planners to personalize NHEW for their own communities. SOPHE encouraged the promotion of this important area of public health not just during NHEW, but throughout the upcoming years. SOPHE will support your efforts to do so, by providing additional resources and information on the sub-themes identified above, so be sure to check back as the campaign continues.