Abstract: The report of the Task Force on Consumer Health Education provides guidelines to policy development in disease prevention, health promotion, and health education. The report emphasized the relation of health status to life style and the timeliness of the current challenge of consumer health education. Current programs, practices, and problems in health education are summarized and analyzed. Major themes of the report are: 1) individual behavior and life style, influenced by internal and external factors, play a major role in health, illness, disability, and premature death; 2) the individual is responsible for informed choices in health care and behavior change; 3) health education is multidisciplinary; 4) empirical research is needed to assess the long-term effects of health education; 5) substantial resources should be committed to health education; 6) the Federal Government has the responsibility to promote health education and assess the effects of national policy; and 7) health education must be rigorously researched and developed, adequately financed and throughly evaluated.