The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of health education by the method of PBL(Problem-Based Learning) on the health promoting behavior of elementary school students and to suggest PBL as one of the most appropriate teaching-learning methods for school health education. The PBL refers to problem-based learning that has turned out to be one of effective teaching-learning methods to foster the problem solving skills of learners in earlier studies. The subjects in this study were the students in two fifth-grade classes in Y elementary school in Seoul. The experimental group received PBL-based health education from this researcher about the health sector of physical education, and the control group took typical teacher-led health education. The application of the PBL program had a good effect on the prevention and management of diseases, in which there were significant gaps between the experimental and control groups, and on nutrition and dietary habits, in which the experimental group underwent significant changes. If PBL-based health education is provided after selecting proper sections or themes and by developing nonstructured problem situations similar to real life, that will be a good way to improve the health promoting behavior of elementary school students.