Employment of health educators is expected to grow by 37 percent from 2010 to 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations. Growth will be driven by efforts to reduce healthcare costs by teaching people about healthy habits and behaviors.
As healthcare costs continue to rise, insurance companies, employers, and governments are trying to find ways to curb costs. One way is to employ health educators, who teach people how to live healthy lives and avoid costly diseases. Lifestyle changes can reduce the likelihood of contracting a number of illnesses, such as lung cancer, HIV, heart disease, and skin cancer. Health educators help people understand how what they do affects their health.
For many illnesses, such as breast cancer and testicular cancer, finding the disease early greatly increases the likelihood that treatment will be successful. Therefore, it is important for people to know how to find possible problems on their own. The need to provide the public with this kind of information is expected to result in an increased demand for health educators.
Projected growth for the industries employing the most health educators is as follows:
| Religious, grantmaking, civic, professional, and similar organizations | 60% |
| Social assistance | 60 |
| Health care | 38 |
| Educational services; state, local, and private | 36 |
| Government | 9 |
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2012-13 Edition