Health education offers a natural curricular home for important life skills and ways students can optimize physical, social, and emotional health. Although many schools have implemented social and emotional learning (SEL), health education provides a broader framework by encompassing the connections between physical and emotional health and the contributions health makes to academic success. Students who receive high-quality SEL instruction in school have achievement scores on average 11 percentile points higher than students who do not receive SEL instruction. In addition, the impact of SEL instruction extends into adulthood. The National Health Education Standards provide a framework for teachers, administrators, and policymakers in designing or selecting curricula, allocating instructional resources, and assessing student achievement and progress. The standards describe what students should know and be able to do by grades 2, 5, 8, and 12 to promote personal, family, and community health. A curriculum based on these standards helps students learn not only health-related concepts and facts, but more importantly, social skills such as interpersonal communication, decision making, goal setting, and advocacy. It provides a foundation for analyzing and responding to the pressures of peers and the media and for assessing the validity of health messages. Students have opportunities to practice such skills in a variety of situations within the safety of a classroom, so they can then confidently apply them in the real world.