THE Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) developed a Learner’s Material which was certified by the Department of Education (DepEd) as compliant with K-12 Curriculum and is suitable for use in public schools. The material will be used in teaching the PhilHealth Lesson in the Grade 10 Health Component of the MAPEH subject.

The integration of the PhilHealth Learner’s Material into basic education aims to provide students with the knowledge and understanding about PhilHealth and the values and principles of social health insurance. It also aims to instill appreciation for the National Health Insurance Program (NHIP) among students early on in their lives and to raise young advocates and champions of PhilHealth. The learning material will present to the students in detail how PhilHealth fulfills its mandate of providing Filipino citizens from all walks of life and ages with social health insurance coverage in order to protect them from financial disaster because of ill health.

Through DepEd, PhilHealth hopes to roll-out the teaching of the Grade 10 PhilHealth Learner’s Material this School Year 2017-2018 to the 21 public schools in the Division of Urdaneta City, being the pilot area in Region 1. In preparation for this roll-out, PhilHealth Regional Office I, together with its Local Health Insurance Office in Eastern Pangasinan, conducted a Training on the Teaching of PhilHealth Learner’s Material for Grade 10 to MAPEH teachers from different schools within the Division of Urdaneta City.

The training was held at CB Mall Event Center in Urdaneta City last May 18, 2017. It was attended by the Education Program Supervisor of MAPEH, Amado R. Macayan and 33 MAPEH teachers coming from different schools in the Division of Urdaneta City. The training was facilitated by Team PhilHealth headed by Dr. Cynthia S. Santos, Division Chief-FOD PRO I, Eduardo U. Dulatre, Chief Social Insurance Officer of LHIO Eastern Pangasinan, Marfe Valerio, Joseph A. Manuel, Adriane Ray Dela Cruz, Keith Giomeer Petrola, Sheryle Domingo and the author.

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The insights shared by Dr. Francis A. Domingo, Education Program Supervisor of DepEd Regional Office 1 made the training more informative and productive. He and Macayan encouraged the teachers to immediately start the teaching of the PhilHealth Learner’s Material from June to August 2017. Macayan instructed two (2) MAPEH teachers to perform a return demo on July 7, 2017. At the end of the training, the participants were delighted that they are now equipped with accurate information regarding PhilHealth programs and benefits that they can share to their students and to their community.

From the Primary Care Benefit Package to the inclusion of the PhilHealth Learner’s Material in the K-12 curriculum, the strong partnership of PhilHealth and DepEd in providing quality care and services to all Filipinos from all ages continues. (END) (Lovelle T. Valenzuela)