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Health Ambassadors to promote healthy life-style
Health Ambassadors have an important and long-term mission in health promotion and cultivation of a healthy community, the Director of Health, Dr Margaret Chan said today (Tuesday).
Speaking at the third Graduation Ceremony of Health Ambassador, Dr Chan said: "The Health Ambassador Programme, which is run by the Central Health Education Unit of the Department of Health, is designed to train different spectrums of people to take up the responsibility of delivering health messages in their neighbourhood so as to promote the health status of the community as a whole."
"The ultimate aim is to establish a health-oriented network within various community groups so that a healthy population can be cultivated." she said.
She paid tribute to the Health Ambassadors for organising a wide range of health education activities in the past year which were well-received by the public.
"This fully reflected each and every health ambassador's effort and success. she added.
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She noted that the programme had been expanded last year and now covered four groups of people including student, woman, elderly and teacher.
The Health Ambassador Programme was first implemented in 1994 on the recommendation of the Health & Medical Development Advisory Committee.
Some 450 Health Ambassadors were trained in 1994 and the number increased to 1.005 last year.
The programme provides tailor-made training to the health ambassadors, enabling and encouraging them to disseminate correct and up-to-date health messages to their family members, peers and the public.
Essentially, the programme consists of lectures covering major health issues in Hong Kong, healthy life-style, communication skill as well as health concerns specific to different groups of trainees.
To date, some 700 health education activities for the public such as health talks, quiz, drama and game booths had been organised by the Health Ambassadors with a total attendance of more than 260,000.
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