JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Health education is a cornerstone of community-based disease prevention, yet the educational role of the physician remains underutilized and poorly defined within clinical practice. A substantial share of prevalent morbidity—including non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as type 2 diabetes, arterial hypertension, and obesity, as well as chronic communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV—responds to structured health education interventions. Nevertheless, physician training remains predominantly centred on the biomedical model, leaving pedagogical and communicative competencies insufficiently developed.

Objective:

To synthesize the current evidence on the physician's role as a health educator for prevalent community diseases, examining theoretical frameworks, demonstrable impact, existing barriers, and evidence-based strategies to strengthen this role.

Methods:

A narrative systematic review was conducted using searches across more than 170 million articles indexed in Consensus, Semantic Scholar, and PubMed. A total of 1,092 potentially relevant papers were identified; after screening for missing abstracts, de-duplication, and semantic relevance filtering, 50 key articles were included. Twenty-one thematically grouped search clusters covered theoretical models, interprofessional approaches, specific disease domains, barriers, and educational perspectives.

Results:

Evidence supports that physician-led educational interventions significantly improve therapeutic adherence, self-care behaviours, and clinical outcomes in chronic and infectious diseases. Multidisciplinary collaborative models consistently outperform individual-physician approaches. Mobile health (mHealth) strategies show particularly strong effectiveness (approximately 5.65 times superior to conventional care) for adherence in resource-limited settings. Key barriers include time constraints, limited pedagogical training, institutional lack of incentives, and cultural misalignment between provider and patient.

Conclusions:

The physician holds substantial potential as a health educator, contingent upon intentional pedagogical training, institutional support, and integration into multidisciplinary teams. Curricular reform at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, combined with mixed incentive systems and technology-assisted education, are essential to maximise this role. Future research should address longitudinal sustainability, differential impact by disease type, and effective incentive structures.