Health: The Basics provides the foundation that students need to lead healthy lives, now and in the future. This text was revised to reflect and exemplify "self-awareness, integrity, respect, self-responsibility, and gratitude," and to ensure students were provided with the most current Canadian research and up-to-date statistical information.

In developing Health: The Basics, we listened to the comments and concerns of Canadian personal health educators and learned that we share the following goals for a personal health text:

• To prepare students to lead healthy lives, now and in the future, by providing knowledge, tools, and strategies to make responsible and appropriate decisions regarding their health.
• To include “high-interest” topics not always included in health texts, such as multicultural and sex-specific perspectives on health.
• To include current Canadian research, material, and statistics.
• To recognize that students learn in many ways and require strong pedagogical elements to help them synthesize information and build healthy attitudes and behaviours.
• To include practical, real-life applications to encourage students to think critically about their health and to apply the material to their own lives.
• To encourage self-awareness, integrity, respect, self-responsibility, and gratitude in the reader.