Objective: The aim is to assess the state of ecological education in student youth and determine its relationship to the level of students' health.
Patients and methods: Materials and methods: The research was conducted on the basis ofthe Polissya National University (Zhytomyr, Ukraine) and the Sumy State Pedagogical University named after A.S. Makarenko (Sumy, Ukraine) in 2018-2020. The ascertaining experiment, which was conducted to assess the state of ecological education of students according to the questionnaire developed by us involved 503 students. The formative experiment aimed at studying the relationship between the level of ecological education and the level of students' health involved 59 students.
Results: Results: The ascertaining stage of the experiment showed that the vast majority of students of different specialties revealed a low level of mastery of the components of ecological education. The formative stage of the experiment showed that the EG students significantly improved the level of all components of ecological education, as well as the level of their health (p < 0.001). No significant changes were revealed in the CG (p > 0.05).
Conclusion: Conclusions: The research showed that purposeful work on the formation of ecological education in the process of fitness and health recreation activities has a positive effect on all its components (knowledge, character building, worldview, culture) and the level of students' health. In general, it will help to improve the efficiency of the educational process of students, improve indicators of their life-sustaining and future professional activities..
Keywords: ecological education; environmental factors; health; physical education; students.