Health education and public policy in the United Kingdom

In the widest sense, health education may be defined as the sum total of all influences that collectively determine knowledge, belief and behaviour related to the promotion, maintenance and restoration of health in individuals and communities. These influences comprise formal and informal education in the family, in the school and in society at large, as well as in the special context of health service activity. Nevertheless, it is particularly a characteristic of professional health education within the National Health Service that it is, or may be, responsibly directed towards influencing behaviour in ways that can be reliably predicted to have a beneficial effect on health.