Health education is a social science that aims to achieve disease prevention and overall good health by drawing knowledge from environmental, biological, psychological, medical, and physical sciences. It also involves making major changes in your behavior, which are driven by proper education, to avoid major complications like disability or premature death. Health education involves developing an individual, group, or community, using complete strategies for the purpose of enhancing your knowledge of health, skills, attitudes, and behavior. The main goal of health education is to create a positive influence on people when it comes to their health behavior. Additionally, health education entails educating people about the environmental conditions that can have an impact on their health. Why is health education important? Health education works on the enhancement of your health status along with that of several other people, families, and communities. Health education improves your quality of living. Through significant focus on prevention, health education decreases both human and financial costs that are usually incurred by you, your family, medical facilities, and communities as a whole. If you are a student, health education increases your attitude toward skills and understanding of health. It provides you with knowledge about mental, physical, social, and emotional health. It also motivates you to maintain your own health through preventing diseases and reducing risky health behaviors, such as smoking. Health education also helps you learn various subjects. A recent study indicated that students in the third and fourth grade with thorough health education scored really well in subjects like reading and math. In simpler terms, healthy students have a better learning ability – a number of studies support this fact. Healthier students do have better academic performance. The supporting evidence for this is better grades and higher attendance, among many other factors. Who provides health education? There are certain people that hold a specialization in health education. These trained and certified individuals are known as health education specialists, or sometimes health educators. Apart from them, there are people that carry out tasks related to a particular function of health education. These include nursing, physical therapy, medical treatment, oral hygiene, and social work, among many others. These people have on-the-job knowledge on how to carry out tasks that promote healthy behavior. To make sure these educators are trained, health education calls for incredibly specialized study. Undergraduate and graduate degrees are offered in over 250 institutes in the U.S., including Master’s and Doctorate degrees. These degrees offer you specialization in community health education, among other related topics. Being competent while practicing health education is extremely important. Health education requires assessment of planning, implementing, and evaluating programs; communication of needs, concerns, and resources; and service coordination. It is of high importance, whether it occurs in schools, colleges, or workplaces, among other educational environments in your community. Certified Health Education Specialists have to apply for re-certification in a period of five years. They have to do so by presenting documentation that proves their participation in educational activities for 75 hours.