Glossary
Health Educator Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential health educator terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key health educator vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in health educator training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- CHES
- Certified Health Education Specialist.
- Cultural tailoring
- Adapting programs to cultures.
- Epidemiology
- Study of disease patterns.
- Evaluation
- Measuring program impact.
- Health behavior theory
- Models of why people change.
- Health literacy
- Ability to understand health info.
- Logic model
- A map of program inputs and outcomes.
- Needs assessment
- Identifying a community’s needs.
- Outcome evaluation
- Measuring results.
- Plain language
- Clear, simple wording.
- Prevention
- Stopping problems before they start.
- Process evaluation
- Checking how a program runs.
- SMART objective
- Specific, measurable goal.
- Marketing for health behaviors.
- Stakeholder
- A person or group with an interest.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Health Educator practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Health Educator training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.