How to Become a Health Educator

Health educators play a vital role in society. They combat potential public health risks by creating awareness about potential public health concerns and encouraging preventive measures and positive habits and behaviors. Health educators educate the public about negative health tendencies, patterns, and practices to be avoided. Their discourse can range from nutrition and exercise to STDs, substance abuse, senior citizens’ health risks, and more. A health educator may also be required to formulate and implement effective preventive, diagnostic, and remedial healthcare education plans, generate funding for those plans, and ascertain the success of the strategies employed. Health educators can work in educational institutions, public health departments, private corporations, pharmaceuticals companies, non-profit organizations, insurance companies, and a variety of other areas.

Becoming a health educator, however, entails a genuine interest in and passion for public health, as well as the acquisition of the necessary skills, knowledge, and qualifications. To become a health educator you need to have, at the very least, a bachelor’s degree in health education. But you need a master’s degree in healthcare to work in the public healthcare sector or to progress beyond entry-level employment. There are several healthcare degrees at the master’s level that provide the instruction, training, and qualifications required to attain higher-level positions such as health education director, health education supervisor, and health education administrator, among others.

Two extremely popular healthcare degrees among healthcare professionals and aspiring health educators are the Master’s of Public Health and the Master’s in Health Services—Health Promotion.

A Master’s of Public Health degree deals with both micro-level and macro-level health concerns, instilling within students an exhaustive understanding of nutrition, disease prevention, environmental health, health promotion, healthcare management, and healthcare biostatistics, among other areas pertinent to public health. Students who successfully complete this degree and pursue the career path of health educator may be equipped to work in the public health sector, executing state-administered programs and generating educational, monetary, and other resources for the public on behalf of government officials. They may also become members of government committees and councils, and provide vital information on healthcare to the masses.

With the steadily rising costs of healthcare, the benefits of a healthy population are becoming clearer than ever. A Master’s in Health Services degree or a Master’s in Health Services – Health Promotion degree aims to produce graduates who will strive to assess and understand public health risks, formulate strategies for public health promotion, spread awareness, and educate the public about health concerns, and about the psychological, physiological, and emotional benefits of good nutrition, exercise, smoking cessation, avoidance of narcotics, and other important issues. Degree courses range from health communication, stress and health correlations, nutrition, health counseling, health behavior assessment, healthcare professional biostatistics, exercise and fitness, and more, all designed to help graduates qualify for management positions in the health education field.

Insurance companies, government agencies, and other public-facing institutions are quickly realizing that preventive measures are the key to fostering a healthier, more productive population, and so the demand for health educators is on the rise. Over the next decade or so, the employment rates for health educators are likely to increase by 18 percent.1 With accredited healthcare degrees such as the Master’s in Health Services – Health Promotion and the Master’s of Public Health, you can work to secure a potentially stable and fulfilling future as a health educator for yourself.

1 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos063.htm)