Time Machine

Health education specialists

Name: Health Education Specialists: employment and wages since 1935
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

Also called Health educator, Public health educator, Health promotion specialist, Community health educator, CHES

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 65,690 US health education specialists, with median pay of $64,070 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 3,000 from 1935, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for health education specialists: Social media and digital health campaigns, 2015 to 2022.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 5.6% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

50% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
33% of work tasks in community and social service occupations, this job's group, are exposed to automation by AI. Not a forecast of job losses. Goldman Sachs, 2023

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Health education specialists: jobs and pay since 1935 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/21-1091

Chicago

Future History. "Health education specialists: jobs and pay since 1935." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/21-1091.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_21_1091, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Health education specialists: jobs and pay since 1935}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/21-1091}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time

1925195019752000now

2026

Known then as Public Health Educator / Health Officer (field worker, no distinct title)

Known then as Health Educator / Public Health Educator (government and voluntary agency era)

Known then as Health Educator / Community Health Educator (professionalization era)

Known then as Health Education Specialist / CHES (credentialed era, NCHEC launched 1988-89)

Known then as Health Education Specialists (BLS SOC 21-1091)

Known today as Health Education Specialists (BLS SOC 21-1091)

Projected to still be called Health Education Specialists (BLS SOC 21-1091)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

66K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$64,070

≈ $62,427 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1909

The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease is launched, operating across eleven southern US states. The commission's work is among the first large-scale demonstrations that community-based health education, specifically convincing rural families to wear shoes and use outhouses, could reduce a disease burden without medical treatment. It established the template for the profession: assess the community's health knowledge, design behavior-change interventions, deliver them through trusted local channels, and measure the outcome.

Beat · 1921

The Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act passes, providing the first federal grants to states for health education work, particularly maternal and infant hygiene instruction. State health departments use the funding to hire health education workers who visit homes, teach prenatal and postnatal care, and run community clinics. The Act is the first time the federal government formally funds the health educator function as a distinct public health activity, though practitioners still have no agreed title or credential. The Act is allowed to expire in 1929 but establishes the precedent of federal support for community health education that would continue through the Social Security Act (1935) and beyond.

Beat · 1950

SOPHE, the Society for Public Health Educators, is founded and incorporated in New York on May 2, 1952. Initial membership requires a graduate degree, positioning health education from the start as a graduate-level profession. SOPHE provides the first professional home for practitioners who had previously been scattered across voluntary health associations, government agencies, hospitals, and schools with no shared identity. Within a decade, SOPHE expands membership to include bachelor-level practitioners with experience, acknowledging the reality of the workforce it served.

Beat · 1973

The President's Committee on Health Education, created by Nixon in September 1971, submits its final report in September 1973. The report explicitly recognizes health educators as a distinct profession for the first time in federal policy. The committee frames health education as a cost-effective alternative to expensive medical care, an argument that would drive federal investment in the field for the next two decades. Its recommendations lead directly to the National Consumer Health Information and Health Promotion Act (1976) and the opening of the National Center for Health Education in 1975.

Beat · 1979

The US Surgeon General's report "Healthy People: The Surgeon General's Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention" is published, setting national measurable objectives for improving the health of Americans by 1990. The Healthy People framework, renewed as Healthy People 2000, 2010, 2020, and 2030, becomes the organizing logic for health education program planning across the country. Every health education specialist working in a government or healthcare setting learns to write program objectives using the Healthy People format. The same year, Prochaska and DiClemente publish the early work on the Transtheoretical Model of behavior change, giving health educators a widely-adopted framework for understanding where individuals are in their readiness to change health behaviors.

Beat · 1988

NCHEC, the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, is established in April 1988 after more than a decade of work building from the 1978 Role Delineation Project. The first Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) exam is offered in 1989. The credential immediately reshapes hiring: employers can now specify "CHES preferred" or "CHES required" in job postings, creating a meaningful credential market that raises educational standards and wages for practitioners who pursue certification. The CHES gains National Commission for Certifying Agencies accreditation in 2008; the Master CHES (MCHES) launches in 2011. By end of 2024, nearly 16,000 active CHES and MCHES practitioners are on record.

Beat · 2010

The Affordable Care Act is signed into law, including provisions for the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which becomes a major source of funding for state and local health education programs. The ACA also establishes requirements for hospitals to conduct community health needs assessments every three years, creating a new institutional demand for health education specialists with expertise in needs assessment methodology. Employment had temporarily contracted during the 2008-2010 recession (state and local health department budget cuts), but ACA-related hiring in hospital and health system settings begins to offset the government-sector losses.

Beat · 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic places health education specialists at the center of the largest public health communication challenge in a century. Vaccine hesitancy, infodemic management, mask guidance, and community testing outreach become primary tasks. The workforce expands rapidly: federal and state emergency funding flows to public health departments, community health centers, and hospital systems for COVID-specific health communication roles. Health education specialists in communities of color and with language-specific skills are in particularly high demand as vaccine disparities by race and ethnicity become a front-page policy issue. Post-pandemic, the visibility of public health communication as a professional function raises both public recognition and political criticism of the profession.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1910

In the first decade of the twentieth century, local and state health departments across the United States faced a novel problem: they had begun to understand the germ theory of disease, but the public largely had not. Tuberculosis was killing 150,000 Americans a year, infant mortality from diarrheal disease ran above 100 per 1,000 live births in urban slums, and the hookworm campaigns of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission (launched 1909 in the American South) were demonstrating that behavioral change through community education could bend a disease curve without a single medical procedure. Who should do that educating? The answer that emerged between 1910 and 1930 was a new kind of worker, not quite a nurse, not quite a social worker, and not quite a teacher, who could translate public health science into community behavior. The New York City Department of Health had hired "health visitors" as early as 1902 to follow up with tuberculosis patients and instruct families in hygiene; the American Red Cross and the National Tuberculosis Association were training "health education secretaries" by the late 1910s. By 1921 the US Public Health Service was formally listing health education as a function of state health departments eligible for federal funding under the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act. The people doing this work were predominantly women, many trained as nurses or teachers, occupying a role that had no formal credential, no agreed title, and no professional organization, but a clear and growing purpose: to change what people believed and did about their own health. The founding of the Society for Public Health Educators (SOPHE) in 1950 gave the field its first professional home. The President's Committee on Health Education (1971-1973) gave it its first federal recognition as a distinct profession. The Role Delineation Project (1978) gave it its first agreed competency framework. And the launch of the Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) credential in 1988-89 gave it the credentialing structure that separated professional health educators from the much broader world of anyone who had ever taught a CPR class.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace health education specialists? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

→ 2035

+5.6%

BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 21-1091 (Health education specialists): 70.4 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 74.4 thousand in 2035, a change of +3.9 thousand (+5.6%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (0.2% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.

Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"

2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)

50%

of tasks

What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 21-1091.00 Health Education Specialists. Shown: human-rated β = 0.5, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.258 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.742; GPT-4-rated β 0.532. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error

Goldman Sachs (Briggs & Kodnani, 2023), "The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth"

2023 study · Share of work tasks exposed to automation by AI, all community and social service occupations (US)

33%

of tasks

What this measures

Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research scored the task content of each US occupation for exposure to automation by generative AI and weighted by OEWS employment. Exhibit 5 (US panel) reports 33% for community and social service occupations, the occupational group this role belongs to; the report publishes no figure for individual occupations. It measures how much of the group's work AI could automate, not how many jobs disappear, and it is a 2023 estimate, not a forecast for a later year.

Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for health education specialists

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is taking this onDocument program activities, maintain participant records, and generate administrative reports for regulatory compliance, grant reporting, and continuous quality improvement.

Document program activities, maintain participant records, and generate administrative reports for regulatory compliance, grant reporting, and continuous quality improvement.^[8],[1]

Tools picking this up

ChatGPT ↗

Where your edge is

Shift from manual documentation toward quality oversight: as AI handles routine report generation and case note summarization, the value-add moves to audit, interpretation, and narrative framing for non-specialist audiences.

AI is sitting alongside you hereManage multi-channel health communication campaigns (social media, press releases, community newsletters) using AI content tools to scale output while maintaining brand and health literacy standards.

Manage multi-channel health communication campaigns (social media, press releases, community newsletters) using AI content tools to scale output while maintaining brand and health literacy standards.^[1],[9]

Tools picking this up

Canva Magic Write ↗Jasper (Healthcare) ↗

Where your edge is

Own campaign strategy and community trust: AI tools scale content production but cannot build authentic relationships with community leaders, local media, or underserved populations who are skeptical of institutional messaging.

AI is sitting alongside you hereDesign and produce culturally tailored health education materials (fact sheets, social media posts, workshop handouts) using AI writing and design tools, then review outputs for health literacy appropriateness and cultural accuracy before distribution.

Design and produce culturally tailored health education materials (fact sheets, social media posts, workshop handouts) using AI writing and design tools, then review outputs for health literacy appropriateness and cultural accuracy before distribution.^[10],[9],[8]

Tools picking this up

Canva Magic Write ↗Jasper (Healthcare) ↗

Where your edge is

Develop deep health literacy competency: AI drafts at a generic reading level; specialists who can tune to a 6th-grade target, a specific language community, or a low-health-literacy audience are irreplaceable.

Where health education specialists go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

Medical and Health Services Managers
US median pay
$123,860 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+24.2%
Data Scientists
US median pay
$120,230 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+34.6%
Community Health Workers
US median pay
$51,850 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+12.7%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Medical and Health Services Managers

Health Education Specialists who gain budget management, staff supervision, and health system operations experience frequently advance into Medical and Health Services Manager roles at hospitals, public health departments, or community health centers. The CHES credential and program management background provides a strong foundation; the gap is business and operations acumen.

What you'd add

· Healthcare financial management and budget oversight
· Regulatory compliance (Joint Commission, HIPAA, CMS)
· Health informatics and EHR system navigation
· Strategic planning and performance metrics for health programs
· Formal management credential (MHA or MPH with management concentration)

What it takesSome new skills to pick up

Tools of the era

How has the work of health education specialists changed since 1910?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Printed pamphlet + lantern slide (field education era)
The early health educator's toolkit was physical and local: printed pamphlets, posters, illustrated leaflets, and the magic lantern projector for community lectures. The National Tuberculosis Association pioneered the use of traveling health exhibits in the 1910s, including a "tuberculosis exhibition train" that toured the country. The US Public Health Service distributed millions of printed pamphlets on venereal disease prevention during WWI. These tools required health educators to be producers as well as distributors of content, skills that the profession would never fully cede even as the media evolved.
Film, radio, and television (mass media health communication era)
After World War II, health agencies at federal, state, and local levels embraced mass media, including educational films, radio public service announcements, and eventually television spots, as multipliers for health education messages. The US Public Health Service produced dozens of educational films on tuberculosis, polio, and venereal disease from the 1940s onward. The arrival of television created new possibilities: the CDC was founded in 1946 and quickly became a producer of public health communication campaigns. Health educators began to specialize in media strategy and public communication alongside their traditional direct-education roles.
Behavioral theory frameworks (Social Learning Theory, Health Belief Model, TTM)
The 1970s and 1980s transformed health education from a practice built on intuition and media reach into one grounded in behavioral science theory. The Health Belief Model (developed 1950s, widely adopted 1970s), Bandura's Social Learning Theory (1977), and the Transtheoretical Model of behavior change (Prochaska and DiClemente, 1979-1983) gave health educators evidence-based frameworks for designing and evaluating interventions. The Role Delineation Project (1978, federally funded from 1979) produced the first competency framework for the profession, leading directly to the CHES credential. This era made health education a science-practice hybrid rather than a purely communication trade.
CHES credential + Healthy People objectives framework (professionalization era)
The CHES (Certified Health Education Specialist) credential, administered by NCHEC from 1988 with the first exam in 1989, transformed how health educators were hired, evaluated, and paid. For the first time, employers could specify a credentialed practitioner rather than a holder of a vaguely-defined educational background. The Healthy People 1990 objectives (published 1979) and Healthy People 2000 (published 1990) gave health educators a shared national target language for program planning and grant writing, connecting the individual practitioner's work to measurable population-level goals. This era solidified health education as a career track with defined entry requirements and advancement paths.
Web, e-learning platforms, and electronic health records (digital integration era)
The internet enabled health educators to develop and distribute materials at scale: health department websites, online wellness portals, e-learning modules for patient education, and later social media campaigns replaced or supplemented the printed pamphlet as the primary distribution channel. Electronic health records, expanding through the HITECH Act incentives after 2009, created new touchpoints for health education at the point of care: patient education materials generated from the EHR, discharge instructions, and preventive care reminders linked to health system databases. Health educators in hospital and health system settings began to coordinate with informatics teams, adding digital health literacy to the competency set.
Social media and digital health campaigns (CDC's social media and mHealth era)
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube became primary channels for public health communication in the 2010s: the CDC's social media presence grew to millions of followers; local health departments launched text-message campaigns for immunization reminders; and mHealth apps for tobacco cessation, physical activity, and chronic disease self-management proliferated. Health educators adapted into campaign strategists, content creators, and digital analytics interpreters. The COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022) stress-tested this infrastructure at scale: health education became front-page news as vaccination communication, mask guidance, and disease risk messaging required real-time, multi-channel coordination reaching every demographic group in the country.
Effect on the work
COVID-19 accelerated both the visibility and the demand for health education specialists. Public health workforce hiring across federal, state, and local agencies increased substantially during 2020-2022, contributing to the employment recovery from the 2015 trough.
AI writing, survey, and analysis tools (augmentation era)
Generative AI tools, including ChatGPT (launched November 2022), Canva Magic Write (2023), Jasper Healthcare, and SurveyMonkey AI, entered the health educator's toolkit as content accelerators. Health educators began using these to draft first versions of fact sheets, social media posts, grant narratives, and workshop curricula, then reviewing and adapting outputs for health literacy level and cultural appropriateness. A 2025 PMC study found that 94 percent of health profession students had received no formal AI training despite broad recognition that AI integration is essential; senior practitioners reported more favorable attitudes toward AI adoption. The CDC deployed more than a hundred AI solutions by December 2025 for public health pattern recognition and data analysis. The augmentation is real but partial: the core tasks of community trust-building, coalition facilitation, and culturally responsive pedagogy are not touched by the current generation of AI tools.

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Health Education Specialists employment and pay by year

On record since1910

Latest US employment65,690 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$64,070 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook+5.6% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

View all 27 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1935	3,000	n/a	Est., NCBI Bookshelf Researched context	Report
1950	8,000	n/a	Est., Society for Public Health Education Researched context	Report
1973	15,000	n/a	Est., PMC Researched context	Report
2000	47,000	n/a	Est., PMC Researched context	Report
2003	42,780	$37,440	BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statistic	Report
2004	46,490	$38,480	BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic	Report
2005	51,970	$39,730	BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic	Report
2006	57,900	$41,330	BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statistic	Report
2007	61,290	$42,920	BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic	Report
2008	62,120	$44,000	BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic	Report
2009	63,320	$44,340	BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic	Report
2010	58,150	$45,830	BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic	Report
2011	56,610	$47,940	BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic	Report
2012	55,270	$48,790	BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic	Report
2013	56,720	$49,210	BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic	Report
2014	57,020	$50,430	BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic	Report
2015	57,570	$51,960	BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic	Report
2016	57,570	$53,070	BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic	Report
2017	58,040	$53,940	BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic	Report
2018	58,780	$54,220	BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic	Report
2019	58,590	$55,220	BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic	Report
2020	57,920	$56,500	BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic	Report
2021	55,830	$60,600	BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic	Report
2022	56,190	$59,990	BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic	Report
2023	57,800	$62,860	BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic	Report
2024	65,150	$63,000	BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic	Report
2025	65,690	$64,070	BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic	Report

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Where health education specialists go next

Medical and Health Services Managers

Printed pamphlet + lantern slide (field education era)Printed pamphlet + lantern slide1910–1945

Film, radio, and television (mass media health communication era)Film1945–1970

Behavioral theory frameworks (Social Learning Theory, Health Belief Model, TTM)Behavioral theory frameworks1970–1989

CHES credential + Healthy People objectives framework (professionalization era)CHES credential + Healthy People object…1989–2000

Web, e-learning platforms, and electronic health records (digital integration era)Web2000–2015

Social media and digital health campaigns (CDC's social media and mHealth era)Social media2015–2022

AI writing, survey, and analysis tools (augmentation era)AI writing2022–present

Health Education Specialists employment and pay by year

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