**1. Introduction**

This chapter will focus on how supporting the learning and health of children and youth everywhere is essential for improving health outcomes and quality of life across the lifespan. Healthy children and youth learn better, and healthy children and youth grow into healthy adults [1–3]. Approaches that address not only the student but families, the whole school, and the community positively impacts academic achievement and health status. Using multiple approaches to address health disparities linked with inequities in education increases the ability to make healthy decisions and use health information and services [4].

The authors of this chapter will use the following questions to share our perspective on the field of health education and how empowering educators' capacity and practice improves health outcomes and educational success.


These questions may cause some trepidation because health education should not look the same for all audiences. However, we believe there are some main ideas that should always be considered when planning and teaching health education to children and youth, and when providing professional development for health educators.
