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Michael Pejsach
Founder
[Michael Pejsach, Ed.D., CHES, Full Vita]
Dr. Pejsach is the founder of the first Health Education telecommunications service, the Health Education Electronic Forum, or "HEEF." While a faculty member at Iowa State University in 1983 he set up the system in his home at his own expense. The original system ran on an Apple //+ with a 300 baud modem and was free and available during the hours of 7 and 11 p.m. every night. Innovators merely dialed their modem in, using standard software, entered a user name and password, connected and accessed a standard menu similar to menus found typically on the left side of the screen on most web pages. End users could E-mail each other, access software and files (handouts, course syllabi, etc.) and join public bulletin boards, similar to modern list servers. It had over 50 hits per week; it was 1983.
A noted Iowa State University head of the department, now retired, said of the idea, "Stop playing with that bulletin board stuff. There is no need for that e-mail thing."
With a small grant from the American Medical Association and, later, the Association for the Advancement of Health Education, now the American Association of Health Education (part of AAHPERD), the HEEF increased it's capacity; HEEF was upgraded to 5 -28.8 bps modems, and 10gb of hard disk storage , and became a 24-hour service (circa 1988!). By the end of its run (no longer a dial in/call-in only BBS and moved to the Internet) the HEEF had accumulated over 30,000 calls, mostly from teenagers: most of the HEEF's public forums were jammed with messages/discussions on human sexuality and death and dying. Most of the public domain software (how to calculate body fat, AIDS primer, health risk assessments, etc.) and files library were accessed by hackers, not health educators (albeit there were national presentations at both AAHE and SOPHE meetings; "Where's the HEEF?"). The HEEF was designed for the health education profession.
One thing is certain about change: change happens. One thing seems to be certain about too many professionals: they seem to fear change, just because it's a change.
"He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery." ~Harold Wilson
"When you are through changing, you are through." ~Bruce Barton
One other thing is certain about change: change is not greeted by all, even professionals, as a "good thing."
"If you want to make enemies, try to change something." ~Woodrow Wilson
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