What is Health Issues in the Community (HIIC)?
Health Issues in the Community, otherwise known as HIIC is a training programme aimed at increasing community capacity, increasing community participation, and establishing/ consolidating community development approaches to tackling inequalities in health.
Who is the course for?
Health Issues in the Community is ideally suited to help equip local people for the real challenges that they face in developing community responses to health issues and becoming more active citizens. See examples of HIIC in action here.
The course is delivered by trained HIIC Tutors and can be tailored to suit different community settings. It can be delivered as an accredited course. The following sections tell you about how you can run a course in your area, and how to become a HIIC Tutor.
You can download the course outline here - Health Issues In The Community - Course Outline
The cost of running a Health Issues in the Community course will vary enormously depending on the venue, transport, accommodation, childcare and tutor fees. The only fixed figure is the cost of accrediting students (this currently stands at £30 per student).
How can the course be used?
An evaluation of HIIC found that the Learning Pack was a valuable resource that had been enthusiastically embraced and promoted in many parts of Scotland. With a worker now dedicated to its continued development there is significantly greater opportunity for this use to increase. It should be of particular interest to agencies that have a remit for tackling health inequalities, promoting community development approaches to health and developing community participation around health.
Health Issues in the Community can certainly provide a good starting point for local people or workers who want to tackle health inequalities at community level.