The goal of a health educator is to work with groups and individuals to teach and encourage a healthy lifestyle. Health educators achieve this goal by creating and delivering educational messages and programs that teach various communities about risky behaviors that can lead to serious disease. In addition, they also educate on topics such as preventing injuries, diseases, and a host of other health conditions. Therefore, health education is the concerned with informing and educating communities and individuals on various health topics in order to prevent disease. Health educators do more than just tell their audience how to stay healthy; they also develop a plan that will meet the needs of the group that they are addressing. This may include organizing events, using other resources and professionals to rally as a team, and setting up health screening services, to name a few.

Health educators typically work in the areas of healthcare or social assistance, but approximately one-quarter of all health educators work for government or state agencies. The typical entry-level degree into the field is a bachelor's degree, but a master's degree is usually required of those who wish to advance to upper-level positions.

A health educator assesses the needs of the people they are working with, develops a plan to address these needs, and then implements the plan or procedure using a variety of professionals to make the program a reality. Once the program has been implemented, health educators then evaluate how useful and successful it is to their audience. Evaluating the success of a program is not an easy task, however, due to the fact that it typically involves conducting surveys of those that have been assisted by the program, and these results may not be 100 percent accurate.