Health education is a profession of educating people about health. Areas within this profession encompass environmental health, physical health, social health, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health, as well as sexual and reproductive health education. Health education can be defined as the principle by which individuals and groups of people learn to behave in a manner conducive to the promotion, maintenance, or restoration of health. However, as there are multiple definitions of health, there are also multiple definitions of health education. In the U.S., the Joint Committee on Health Education and Promotion Terminology of 2001 defined Health Education as "any combination of planned learning experiences based on sound theories that provide individuals, groups, and communities the opportunity to acquire information and the skills needed to make quality health decisions." The World Health Organization (WHO) defined Health Education as consisting of "consciously constructed opportunities for learning involving some form of communication designed to improve health literacy, including improving knowledge, and developing life skills which are conducive to individual and community health." History It is often thought that health education began with the beginning of healthcare in the earliest parts of history as knowledge was passed from generation to generation. Preserved texts from ancient civilizations in China, India, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia and others contain information regarding various diseases, their treatments, and even preventative measures. The first medical school was later founded at the end of the 8th century in Salerno, Italy and focused a significant portion of its curriculum on proper hygiene and healthy lifestyles. Much later, Johann Guttenberg's printing press paved the way for making educational materials more accessible as some of the first things to be printed were treatises regarding health. Informational materials containing information about hygiene and healthy lifestyle choices became popular as a tool to combat epidemics. In the 19th century, "awareness-rising" began to increase to improve the knowledge of the average people regarding health and other topics. As medicine has continued to progress, with new fields being created to address new problems, so too has methods of providing health education. Prior to the 1960s, the physician was primarily in charge and the patients were expected to have a passive role in their own health decisions. In 1976, the Patient Education and Counseling journal was founded and the concept of health education began to really take off. It was around this time that it became apparent