Concern surrounding the status of health education in elementary schools centers around (1) a lack of agreement concerning content, scope, and sequence, (2) its interdisciplinary character, (3) poor teacher preparation, and (4) reliance on incidental teaching and learning situations. Improvement depends upon: (1) defining the areas of concern for health education (experiences influencing knowledge, attitudes, and practices relating to personal, family, and community health), and other health-related areas, such as school health (the determination of health status), and health environment (physical and humanistic surroundings); (2) organized curricular development, as pure subject matter, and as attitude and habit formation; (3) establishing priorities for topics on the basis of importance, relevance, and need, and weighing the discussion of issues on this basis; (4) defining the role of the classroom instructor as the central person (from the child's viewpoint) involved in health observation, environmental improvement, and health instruction; and (5) concept formation and the embodiment of cognitive knowledge in behavioral development. Studies have shown that health course content is both boring and repetitious and ignores the problems of consumer education, sex education, venereal disease, alcohol, drugs and smoking, nutrition, mental health, and environmental hazards. Health education must be recognized as an academic discipline worthy of the respect and concern given to all other academic discipline areas, or this situation will remain unchanged. (Appendixes include a suggested curriculum for grades K-6; the relationship of key health concepts; a bibliography of 32 citations; and a reference list of 17 citations.) (MB)