The essence of health education is an intervention measure. Health education is to use the theory of teaching and learning to improve people's health knowledge, make people voluntarily adopt healthy life behaviors and make effective use of existing health care resources, and finally achieve the goal of improving people's health status and quality of life.

Health education is different from other education, its essence is an intervention process, and its purpose is to change the unhealthy lifestyle and behavior of the educated. Health education can be divided into health education for patients and health education for healthy people (including high-risk groups) according to education objects.