Cómo hacer más efectiva la educación en salud en la atención primaria?

a bibliographic review on some aspects of health education is made aimed at providing family physicians and nurses with strategies and methodological procedures that allow them to improve the effectiveness of health messages and to use selfregulation methods to attain protective conducts and to modify unhealthy habits. the new conceptions of communication and their utilization within the framework of the health model of competence are analysed. the social skills the health agent should develop and put into practice, the strategies to facilitate the inderstanding of health messages, and the utilization of the health counsel are assessed in this paper. the necessary methodology to use the precaution adoption process model is also given. it is concluded that an effective health education is not just to report, but to propitiate selfcontrol with socioeconomic premises for public health