Abstract:

Introduction: In the presence of chronic diseases with slow evolution and no definitive treatment possibilities, Health Education should lead the individual to understand the disease and its conditioning factors, help him to live with it and accept the treatment, as well as the medical recommendations; it should also lead to the use of the individual’s internal resources, in order to overcome the disease (Morrondo, 1996).

Objectives: We intend to evaluate the AIDS-related health education in higher education institutions.

Methods: Sample constituted by 2002 higher education students from the North and Centre of Portugal. We intended to build and validate an instrument able to evaluate the AIDS-related health education performed with the subjects.

Results: The mean age was 21,8 years. Most of the sample are female (61%), 55% attends health area courses. 62% has never had health education formation, particularly in the area of AIDS.
The evaluation of AIDS-related health education decreases with age. The mean value of the scale and all the factors was always superior in the feminine gender and the differences were statistically significant. Globally and for all individual factors, the evaluation of AIDS-related health education is not related to the residence area, except for Factor 4 – Educational Methods, which is more valued by those who live in the city. Factor 1 – Educational Resources is more valued among the middle socio-economic level and Factor 2 – Learning Process is less valued in the low socio-economic level. Globally and individually for Factor 3 – Contents and Factor 4 – Educational Methods, it is not related with the socio-economic level; it is superior in students from health area courses for all the factors individually.

Conclusion: In order to somehow decelerate this global blight it is necessary to invest in health education. However, this investment can not be made in an unplanned way; it must be designed to have the maximum effect within the target population, in this case, the youngsters.

Keywords:

health education, aids, students.