Miguela Martínez’s scientific contributions

Metaphors are a pedagogical and therapeutic tool to facilitate communication and understanding of issues related to health and disease. Objective: To present the metaphors that the team of "Aula de Salut" has been developed based on experience in teaching graduates, post-graduates and professionals, intervention and counseling in Health Education (HE), to think and teach intervention models in HE. Methods: Has followed the methodology of action research Mac Kernan. Results: Has characterized four types of health professionals based on their model of intervention (jug, pot, whip and a midwife) with their metaphors. The use of the aforementioned metaphors are causes of the involving both students and professionals, allowing them to observe and analyze models of intervention to help them understand and improve outcomes. Conclusions: It has proved a very useful tool because it presents a means for researching in the field of HE both in terms of practical assistance and in training of health professionals. It is also a key element facilitating more effective communicationa and, finally, it presents as a way of thinking it becomes a vehicle for understanding new ideas, concepts and methods.

Objective: The aim is to present a research project, which starts with the evolution of Health Education (HE) through the ages to arrive at an understanding of the origin and construction of the discipline. Method: This is done through a qualitative historic study framed in the interpretative paradigm of ethnohistory and hermeneutics. The organizing concepts of this paradigm are: the education; the person; the group or community; the historical eras: the pre-history; the antiquity (ancient and classical cultures); the Middle Ages; the Renaissance and the Recent times up to the end of the Spanish Civil War. The subject under study is Health Education beginning from its constituent parts (the concept of health; beliefs; knowledge of hygiene; interventions and educational resources for personal and group health) in each of the historical eras under study. Sources are indirect - archaeological, cultural, verbal both written and semiotic/audiovisual and those not serialies. Gathering of information through the techniques of qualitative history: observation and analysis of written material, visual art, newspapers, official publications, bibliographies and textual-philosophic techniques (analysis of primary and secondary historical sources). The analysis of information will be chronological and by subject classification and by historical periods.