In Australia, school-based health educators work in a complex landscape, constituted in part by: i) the demands of a culturally and socially diverse student population; ii) expectations that schools will solve all the social and health problems of young people; and iii) health education subject matter comprised of some of the most morally contested subject matter within schooling. This is the context into which beginning HPE teachers must start their practice. In this paper we discuss the results of a qualitative interview study designed to determine how HPE initial teacher education students understand school-based health education and how well they feel prepared for this task. The findings suggest that the HPETE students regarded the HE component of HPE as a challenging subject; challenging because of its morally loaded content and because it deals directly with the choices young people are making in their lives. The HPETE students found their different ways of managing this space, some preferring the safety of statistics and textbooks and others celebrating the chance to engage with young people on topics that mattered to them. No matter their attitude to health education, risk discourses still permeated their talk about young people’s health.