Present
Health Education Bureau (HEB) is the centre of excellence in Sri Lanka for health education, health promotion and publicity of health information. Empowering and mobilizing communities for the improvement of their quality of life through health promotion principles is the main achievement gained for last few years.
HEB is at the present headed by Dr. Neelamani Rajapaksha Hewageegana, Director Health education and Publicity, who is a Consultant in Medical Administration. The Director is assisted by the deputy Director, and a team of Consultant Community Physicians, Consultant Community Dental Surgeons, Medical Officers, Dental Surgeons, Chief Health Education Officer, Health Education Officers, Administrative and Supportive staff.
National Health Promotion policy, communication strategies on nutrition and Non Communicable Diseases (NCD) prevention developed by HEB provide common objectives to be achieved by different sectors and technical guidelines to assure the standards of health promotion activities. Public awareness aiming for healthy behavior changes in the community through mass media is a unique service that has been providing for years by HEB and appraised by all sectors. Apart from that, HEB plays a vital role in public awareness about health promotion and healthy behavior changes by actively participating mass scale health exhibitions, national campaign days, and organization and community events such as “Deyata Kirula”, “Suwa Udana” etc. Various types of health education materials have been produced over the period to address emerging health issues such as Dengue, Leptospirosis, malnutrition and non communicable diseases. Developing households and public places such as hospital, school, villages, work place etc as health promotion settings is another successful program conducts by HEB.
Apart from undergraduate and postgraduate training, continuous in service training has been carried out for health care staff and other personals involving or interested in health promotion. Routinely, HEB provides technical consultation for advisory committees, workshops, research and surveys and very often invited by other public organizations to share its expertise.
A recent achievement is launching this Health net “Suwasariya” website and call centre for the public. It provides fast and simple expert advice in all three languages about any health issue and what to do next through telephone calls, e mails or skype and supported by tri lingual web site which contains a lot of information about health.
As a whole, HEB has been successful and received recognition for its remarkable contribution for health promotion through integrated multidisciplinary approach.
Health Education Bureau No.2, Kynsey Road, Colombo 08. Sri Lanka