*Perspective Chapter: Strengthening and Empowering Professional Health Educators' Capacity… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108980*

What constitutes quality professional development? We in believe professional development that allows for a growth mindset approach, where professionals learn, apply skills, evaluate beliefs that hinder equitable learning, reflect, and improve competency. Safe learning formats should allow for health educators to explore personal perspectives and vulnerabilities. Professional development models where educators learn, analyze, dialog, assess competence with standards, and evaluate beliefs improve self-efficacy. Ollis [67] and Bogler [68] demonstrated that professional development had favorable results on teacher self-efficacy and that training increased perceived self-efficacy in pedagogical methods and subjects taught. Learning opportunities focused on capacity-building support educator self-efficacy.

Professional development can take the form of in-person learning, online learning, online communities, and access to online resources and tools. Addressing learner and professional teaching standards is critical for successful professional development. Resources and effective strategies for addressing barriers, including comfort with health education topics, personal perspectives, should also be covered. These efforts and support for self-reflection and growth will increase self-efficacy and educator agency. The following professional development recommendations can serve to build health educators' capacity and continue to improve practice [69].

	- a.Examples include independent self-study, video analysis, case study, professional learning communities (where we all contribute to learning while gaining knowledge and skills), observing a lesson, coaching, peer observation and feedback.
	- a.Explore and identify contacts for support, ideas, and collaborations. These include colleagues, professional associations, non-profit, community and government organizations.

Provide opportunities to learn from and collaborate with international health educators and professionals. Some examples are provided in the **Table 4** below.
