Education as a viable intervention for the maintenance of health and the prevention of disease has received increasing attention in the last decade. In the United States one factor which has brought education to the fore is the recognition that both individual and collective behaviour contribute to the high rate of chronic disease. Behaviours such as overeating, smoking or lack of exercise, all of which have been determined to be major risk factors for cardiovascular disease and cancer, are amenable to educational interventions.

In public health and medical care, the goal of most of the educational programs is some kind of behavioural change. We look to the elimination of a behaviour, such as smoking, or the modification of a behaviour, such as dietary practices, or the addition of a new behaviour, such as, physical activity.

Many programs with a behavioural change goal, assume that the giving of information about the behaviour and its relation to an illness is all that is needed. Information can be useful in the learning process but it is not the total process. If behaviour is to be influenced, i.e., people do something different from what they have been doing, additional variables must be considered.

Since education has an excellent potential for the maintenance of health and the prevention of disease and since all health personnel are educators, it is important that there be a common understanding of their educational role versus the role of the health education specialist. It is equally important that all public health and medical care personnel have a grasp of basic learning principles and the application of these principles to their specific setting.

This paper  will define education as it applies to health/disease issues and concepts often used synonymously with health education, i.e., learning, social change and compliance. It will describe the educational component of the role of all health professionals, and the difference between that role and the role of the health education specialist. The knowledge and skills required of the health education specialist role, the process by which that role was developed and the working relationship between other health professionals and the health education specialist will be detailed. Finally theories and learning principles basic to the practice of health education will be set forth.

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