Health educators are all about empowerment. As the ultimate advocates, these passionate professionals remind us that we can take charge of our own health. Their encouragement has ripple effects, inspiring not only individuals but ultimately entire communities to embrace healthy habits and to support one another.  

All this is compelling, but practically speaking, what does a health educator do? There is no simple answer; in this field, every day looks a bit different. However, the overarching goal is to improve health literacy by creating memorable learning materials and experiences. 

To clarify this role and how it plays out on a day-to-day basis, we draw inspiration from Keiser University’s Dr. Alshondrea Denton. Known as ‘Shon’ around the university, she serves students in an official capacity as a faculty member but also refers to herself as an “advisor, instructor and counselor” and hopes to “see students matriculate through the programs successfully.” Her mission in the clinical world is similar but with the broader goal of improving quality management and patient safety.  

Interested in following in Dr. Denton’s footsteps? Keep reading for additional inspiration and insight into how health educators like Dr. Denton spend their time and make a difference.  

Morning: Preparation and Program Planning

Many health educators work with varied audiences while striving to expand their influence. This is certainly true for Dr. Denton, who works in clinical environments and higher education. In both spaces, she dedicates a considerable amount of time to prep. Her planning process can look a bit different from one setting to the next, though. 

Speaking to her diverse work, Dr. Denton explains, “My education role in the healthcare organization is 60% the patient and 40% staff.” In higher education, however, she largely spends her mornings in meetings, dividing that time between students and fellow faculty members.  

Administrative Duties

Because health educators wear so many hats, they must carefully coordinate their complex schedules. Behind much of this effort involves documentation and reporting — for example, maintaining records surrounding student progress or tracking the outcomes of numerous community initiatives. This fosters accountability and helps health educators (and various partners or stakeholders) make informed decisions. 

Resource management is also a priority, especially as many health educators face considerable budgetary limitations. Health educators may develop (or at least weigh in on) program budgets, estimating the cost of educational materials and, when needed, prioritizing to ensure that high-impact programs receive the practical support they require.  

Research and Resource Development

Health educators contribute to the field’s growing body of research by gathering data on health behaviors, namely as they relate to health-focused programs or initiatives. Through this research, health educators can identify areas of need, reflect on progress or inform educational best practices.  

In support of the broader effort to improve health literacy, health educators use research-backed insights to develop instructional tools and materials. Other educators can leverage these practical resources to inspire students, patients and community members. These materials could include everything from pamphlets to toolkits to online modules.  

Lesson/Workshop Preparation

Lesson planning enables health educators to adjust materials and experiences to meet the needs of their diverse audiences. During the planning process, they identify learning objectives and find creative ways to help students meet these educational goals. 

Through careful planning, educators ensure that all lessons feel accessible yet also drive progress. Lesson plans may need to be adapted based on cultural factors or even according to location or format. What resonates when instructing staff members in a hospital, for instance, may not be as impactful in a college classroom — and adjustments will almost certainly be necessary if sharing similar information via online platforms.  

Dr. Denton’s lessons call for plenty of planning. She needs to consider not only which topics she will cover but also which real-world examples she will use to illustrate complex ideas. Explaining how she draws on scenarios relevant to each week’s topic, she says that this approach would prove especially valuable in exploring “global health and improving chronic conditions globally.” 

Midday: Direct Engagement and Teaching

Following detailed planning and administrative tasks, health educators are equipped to engage with students, staff, patients and community members. This is where public-facing health educator duties and responsibilities come into play.  

Dr. Denton reminds us that health education involves many types of learners — not just college students. “The patient, we are continuously educating,” she says. “We want them to know what’s going on with their health, how they improve it, what they need to look at, what they need to ask us if they see things, what’s going on … As a discharge planner, I’m the last person that the patient sees.” 

Community Outreach

Community outreach is a critical component of health education for those who do not work in healthcare. This encourages educators to get to know local individuals and families, even working with small businesses or nonprofits to help community members access health-related programs and services.  

Community programs should reflect locally relevant health challenges or opportunities, along with cultural traditions that can inspire greater participation by helping community members feel seen and respected. Examples of community-focused efforts could include workshops on sexual health or anti-tobacco campaigns for local youth programs. 

One-on-One Counseling

Although health education often involves group lessons or workshops, one-on-one sessions can also be expected. These allow health educators to connect on a more personal level, offering both targeted insights and skill development along with practical and emotional support. This might involve mentorships, through which health educators help individuals understand the intricacies of the professional world that may be difficult to grasp through coursework alone.  

For Dr. Denton, these sessions often involve doctoral students. She helps them refine their research, offering both academic and professional insights that can help these students discover their role in improving the health of patients or communities. In clinical settings, however, one-on-one meetings could involve discharge planning. This means confirming that patients “are clear on instructions from the clinician, from the medication perspective and from the post-surgical perspective.” 

Workplace Training

Many health educators move beyond the campus or online spaces, bringing their insights to real-world healthcare environments to inform or inspire staff members. A noteworthy example from Dr. Denton: introducing clinical professionals to new butterfly needles. “Everyone in the hospital had to be educated on it and had to receive a demonstration,” she says. 

While many such initiatives center on new tools or equipment, it is also common for health educators to address ethical or compliance concerns. Through these training sessions, health educators hope to equip staff members with new skills while cultivating a spirit of continuous learning.  

School-Based Education 

Colleges and universities allow health educators to inspire future generations of educators. Their work in higher education may involve a variety of degree and certificate programs. Many teach online courses, which grant them the flexibility to connect with college students while still remaining involved in community outreach and clinical training. 

Dr. Denton points out that she works primarily with doctoral students, though she does teach a class at the master’s level as well. She appreciates the balance she gets in this regard, as she is able to work remotely. “I do what we call live sessions once a week for each class, and those can range from 30 minutes to 45 minutes.” 

Afternoon: Collaboration and Program Management

Although health educators collaborate throughout the day, they must be intentional about setting aside time for check-ins, which allow them to discuss upcoming programs and address numerous challenges surrounding these initiatives. Collaboration plays heavily into program management, which encompasses everything from budgeting to preparing reports.  

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Collaboration is vital to success in both clinical and academic environments. Dr. Denton explains that, as a faculty member, collaboration primarily entails meeting with fellow instructors to update syllabi and ensure that lessons align with broad academic objectives.  

In a clinical capacity, collaboration expands to include physicians, nurse practitioners and registered nurses working together to promote evidence-based care. She highlights a helpful example of working with a cardiac patient, which means collaborating with not only cardiologists but also nephrologists and psychologists. While these professionals offer unique perspectives, health educators can help synthesize all this information to ensure patients receive consistent guidance that they actually understand. 

Policy and Program Implementation

Educators translate health policies into practice by designing and implementing programs that reflect guidelines or requirements at the local, state or federal levels. They ensure that all relevant individuals (such as students or staff members) understand these policies and recognize the role they play in adhering to them. Their efforts can ultimately determine whether public or institutional policies lead to improved health outcomes or stronger compliance.  

Compliance is important in all aspects of health education, but Dr. Denton is quick to point out its role in research: “It’s a lot of consenting, educating, making sure that we are compliant and that the enrollee is understanding what their role is and that it’s voluntary … making sure they understand the compliance side.” 

Grant Writing and Reporting

As mentioned, health educators often encounter significant funding limitations that may hinder their ability to implement promising health literacy programs. This is where grants can make a major difference. A valuable source of funding, grants can help health educators invest in critical resources or support — yet these funding programs are often extremely competitive and may involve many administrative hurdles.  

Through grant writing, health educators create proposals that attract attention. These proposals reveal the potential for future programs to positively impact targeted populations. Health educators commit to grant writing in hopes of overcoming financial hurdles and following through on the vision for building healthier communities.  

Curriculum Development

Curriculum development determines how educational content is planned or designed. This systematic process begins with essentially asking: Which health-related concepts could students, patients or clinical staff members benefit from exploring? 

Through needs assessments, health educators uncover gaps in understanding, then create goals that clearly show how educators can address these gaps. Finally, these goals allow health educators to select content, learning experiences and teaching strategies that are most likely to improve health literacy.  

Relevance is a priority, with Dr. Denton elaborating, “The students are pleased with the level as well as the information that they’re provided and the learning objectives that we cover. They really like the relevancy of it and how current it is.” 

Evening: Reflection and Continued Growth

No day in the life of a health educator will look exactly as one anticipates. Amid unexpected challenges and scheduling or resource limitations, even the most driven and knowledgeable health educators are bound to eventually fall short. Through reflection, however, they can consider what went well and where they might adjust their approach in the future. This means not only reflecting on personal impressions of the day but also examining metrics that provide a window into student learning and satisfaction.  

Evaluating Program Effectiveness

Quantitative evaluations offer insight into educational outcomes, revealing whether specific learning goals were met during lessons, workshops and other outreach efforts. This effort could involve surveys (as we later discuss) but is also important for staff training and community engagement.  

Referencing evaluations in clinical settings, Dr. Denton mentions the role of the Leapfrog Group in assessing hospital safety. Upon receiving these annual metrics, Dr. Denton aims to adjust her approach “based on what the patient said, where some of the clinical staff fell short … we base our education on those results.” 

Professional Development

Speaking to the need for continuous learning, Dr. Denton explains, “A health educator has to be on top of what’s going on right now.” This is crucial, in part, due to frequent updates surrounding evidence-based practice, not to mention emerging technologies. Key elements of professional development include continuing education units (CEUs) and professional conferences. 

Dr. Denton also emphasizes the value of reading articles from industry experts, noting that she tackles a lot of research on her own. “Different journals come to the house or to my email. So, I’m pretty confident about staying abreast of all the new things just because of that.” 

Community Engagement

In an effort to expand their influence, health educators strive to share their messaging not only with patients, clinical professionals and college students but also in the broader community. Dr. Denton reveals the sheer joy of connecting with the community with a fun example: a program she led called “In the Know,” where she approached patients or family members to ask a random health-related question (and educate them if they did not know the answer). 

Through such efforts, Dr. Denton believes that health educators can boost health literacy on a wider scale. After all, while she believes that it has increased greatly over time, “it needs to get even better because a lot of people don’t understand their health.” 

Skills and Qualities in Action

As multitalented professionals, health educators draw skills and experiences from many areas, using their unique backgrounds as inspiration for programs and experiences that help audiences feel connected. Their diverse knowledge helps them support a vast range of students in colleges, in clinical settings and beyond.  

Communicating Complex Medical Information

Health educators help students, patients and clinical staff members make sense of complex information, translating research so it is easier to comprehend. This understanding, in turn, paves the path for lifestyle changes or other actions that can lead to positive health outcomes. 

However, as mentioned, health educators also want to equip patients with the skills needed to become more health-literate. This means knowing how to ask the right questions and learning to evaluate health information to ensure only the most credible advice is followed.  

Leading New Initiatives to Shape Healthier Communities

Health educators can spot areas of need within their communities, along with opportunities to address them through the power of health literacy. They are the driving force behind some of today’s most impactful initiatives. Leadership skills allow them to bring their ambitious ideas to life. Dr. Denton’s goal in creating these community programs is to make health education fun and interesting.  

Empathy and Patient-Centered Education

The role of empathy is well understood as it relates to patient care, but it is just as important from an educational perspective. Through empathy, health educators can better understand why certain health issues are so prominent within particular communities or environments. They can also tailor educational content or instructional styles to reflect unique challenges that various patients may face. This crucial skill can be developed through reflection and by continually seeking out new perspectives.  

Challenges and Rewards of a Health Educator’s Day

Health educators find their work rewarding, but the many meaningful moments may be punctuated by frustrating circumstances. Aspiring health educators must understand both sides of this field: the joy of helping individuals, families and communities, alongside the setbacks that are bound to test their patience.  

Health Literacy for Patients and Providers

Health educators are committed to improving health literacy but often find this effort challenging, given the sheer abundance of incorrect information readily available on social media or even traditional media. Health educators aim to cut through common misconceptions by clarifying complex health concepts. This can feel difficult, however, in part because health educators need to correct mistaken assumptions using information that may seem downright dull compared to the sensationalized stories that patients encounter online.  

Dr. Denton says this can be addressed by not only providing students and patients with accurate information but also teaching them to evaluate health information on their own. Specifically, she feels that health educators should “encourage people to be an advocate for themselves” and that “it’s important to educate patients on being more educated and more literate about their health.” 

AI in Healthcare Education

Exciting technological solutions promise enhanced support for today’s healthcare educators, but artificial intelligence (AI) is among the most transformative. Leveraged strategically, this can help health educators bring a more personal element to their programs — helping tackle administrative tasks more efficiently so they can spend more time actually interacting with patients or students.  

The flip side? The very AI-powered systems that seem so helpful from the educator’s perspective can surface ethical concerns such as the increased potential to compromise patient privacy, not to mention skewed understanding as algorithmic bias enters the picture.  

To that end, Dr. Denton has mixed feelings about AI in healthcare education. She acknowledges that it can have a positive influence: “I think in the future … health educators have to have a better understanding of AI.” She thinks this will become a key tool for “understand[ing] change[s] in the patient population.” That being said, AI can prove problematic when health literacy is lacking, as patients may assume that AI insights are of equal value to actual medical advice from trusted physicians or nurses.  

Measuring Success and Impact as an Educator

There are numerous ways to determine whether educational efforts achieve their intended goals. The metrics highlighted above can be helpful, but it does not always tell the full story and instead can miss the small (but meaningful) distinctions that are not always captured in the data. 

For this reason, Dr. Denton feels that success should be measured, to some extent, on the basis of the effort put in. She mentions that, while she may need to explain a specific concept several times before students ‘get it,’ that lightbulb moment makes it all feel worthwhile. “That’s a level of success for me as faculty.” 

Keiser Student Feedback and Surveys

Keiser University actively seeks student feedback via surveys, which guide program planning by revealing which educational experiences are most impactful — and where improvement is possible. This feedback helps students feel heard and respected while also encouraging faculty members to reflect on curricula and instructional styles. Dr. Denton references Keiser’s annual survey where, after each class, students say what they liked and what they didn’t like.” 

Advice for Future Health Educators

Health education can be a competitive and demanding field. It takes years of well-rounded training and experience to prepare for this role, not to mention an enduring commitment to learning and professional development.  

Skills For Success as a Health Educator

Health educators possess distinct skills relevant to their prior experience in the healthcare field. Many begin their careers in nursing or public health, developing clinical insights and research skills that continue to serve them well as they step into the world of health education. For example, Dr. Denton previously worked in clinical nursing and studied healthcare administration, and she draws upon these diverse areas when using real-world examples to illustrate complex health concepts.  

Other skills may take additional time and effort to develop — especially instructional competencies. Even the most talented clinical or public health professional might struggle with areas such as curriculum development, grant writing or program management. These require strong planning and coordination.  

Other key competencies include:  

  • Resource allocation  
  • Team management 
  • Soft skills such as adaptability, problem-solving and communication 

Advice for Professionals Considering This Career

If given the chance to do it all again, Dr. Denton believes that she would follow the exact same path, saying, “I have enjoyed my life. I’ve enjoyed my career choices.” She draws attention to not only the joy of empowering others to improve their health but also the practical benefits of this field; for example, her hours were flexible enough to spend quality time with her son as he was growing up. 

Diversification or Specialization as a Health Educator?

In health education, career planning often involves exploring specializations. This is where a common debate may arise: Should health educators focus on developing expertise in one specific area — or should they focus on breadth of learning? 

Dr. Denton believes in the power of diversification, stating, “I think it’s important to know a little bit about a lot of things.” She thinks that, if nothing else, this is important from a job searching perspective: “I have some colleagues that have only worked in one area, and now they can’t get jobs anywhere else.”  

Health Education: What More People Should Know

The sheer breadth of health education can make this field one that is hard for outsiders to fully grasp. Health educators may be experts, but they, like the patients or students they instruct, are continually seeking new information and insights. Dr. Denton urges students (and the general public) to realize that health educators do not know everything — but they’re committed to learning. She clarifies, “I’m the instructor [but that] doesn’t mean that I know everything.” 

Explore Meaningful Opportunities in Health Education

At Keiser University, we are committed to empowering tomorrow’s healthcare leaders. We offer a number of graduate programs that support career growth across the broad spectrum of health education and leadership. Options worth exploring include the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), the Doctor of Health Science (DHSc), and the MBA in Health Services Administration. Feel free to contact a graduate admissions officer to discuss our programs — and learn how we can support you in your educational journey.