**7. Conclusion: next steps and looking forward**

How do we continue to inform key stakeholders and the larger community that health education creates opportunities for improved health and well-being? Healthier students learn better and poor health impacts educational attainment [72, 73]. We much continue to engage in this ongoing work to link the health and education sectors. We must create cohesion and alignment at the national, state, community, and school levels and use a more comprehensive model for health education. There are great benefits in using the WSCC and UNESCO model to continuously develop and refine coordinated school health efforts that support rigorous health and education outcomes for all youth. This can reverse the causality. As we move to create more health-literate societies in our countries and beyond, we must stay vigilant to the conditions of individuals and communities lives that impact both health and education. Health literacy is one of the social determinants of health. This work along with the implementation of skills-based health education can inform pedagogical practices that address the social determinants of health and create environments that support healthy literacy and healthy behaviors for all.

Now more than ever, there is a need for highly qualified health educators. Building confidence and competence in our health educators' practice improves health outcomes for all. We must invest in high quality preservice education and ongoing professional development to support the growth of all health educators. The WSCC model and the HPS model should be used to frame opportunities to consider health education and the bidirectional influences on each component of the model to reinforce and reimagine the connections between education and health. We anticipate that ongoing opportunities to connect health education and social justice will continue to evolve. We look forward to new learning that enables conversion of these relevant domains to improve delivery of health education. Continuing to create systems, policies and practices that put students and their health at the center of the educational system builds health literate individuals and thus, a health literate society.
