Health Educators: Warriors against Pleasure?

Julie Gast, professor of health education, wants people to be happy — even if she has joined a profession that can seem to be wagging a finger at human weakness.

She took time to reflect on her views during her Inaugural Lecture, offered earlier this year at the Utah State University President’s Home. The event is coordinated through the Provost’s office.

She spoke on her own health education philosophy, which she did not choose with the idea of taking away everything people love.

Instead, she said health educators should be a voice of reason — and they should help people focus on the good things that come with healthy habits.

“I don’t’ think guilt and shame are very motivating,” she said. “A number on a scale, that just makes people feel bad.”

Instead she urges people to focus on how they feel when they’re exercising and eating well.

“It feels good to take care of yourself if you’re doing it in the right way and not being punitive,” she said.

“Follow your passion. Follow your dream. … You’re going to be miserable if you’re not studying what you love,” is her advice to students entering her field.

Her advice to practitioners who are already in the field?

“We have to branch out and understand our expertise, but also to work with other people to solve major health problems,” she said. (Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees are in sociology.)

Poverty and a bad environment can affect health more than a bad choice at the lunch counter.

“We tend to think of health as a personal thing, but we need to look at social implications,” she said.

In the future she hopes health educators will work with other professionals — medical researchers, epidemiologists and others who can work as a team to improve health in their communities.

“We can’t work in silos anymore.”

USU Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services

Contact: Julie Gast, julie.gast@usu.edu

Writer: JoLynne Lyon, 435-797-1463