|
|
The point of all of the "revolution talk," is this: as professionals, we need to participate in professional organizations to enhance practice, and share our research and development so others can prosper professionally as well. However, we have many small organizations (many hampered by their parent organizations, overflowing academia representation, and/or by their history), and thus, health educators, with little resources -- money, energy and human resources, get little bang for their buck when they join such organizations. If they join more than two, as is often the case, because of their interests or specialty, they will pay as much, or more, in membership dues than higher paid nurses and physicians pay for their professional organization. And what do they get? Do health educators get what nurses and docs get: turf protection, marketing, million dollar grants from HRSA? Yes, we get the finest professional meetings, great speakers, wonderful gatherings, and the best journals. Yet, we continue to lose jobs (higher paying jobs?) to nurses, social workers and other unprofessionally prepared "health educators." Instead of being focused, together, and united as one, we're spread thin, we're "all over the place." Being professionally involved as a health educator is important, but it may be a losing effort. We're not getting a lot of bang for the buck. I'm not certain we can or should continue this way.
We did it backwards! Instead of having a single organization from which smaller focused organizations could develop (as the profession grew and interests shifted; see AMA and ANA history), we started out with special interest groups and association components, all of which kept us small, or as "a part of" something else. We are now emerging as a profession. The 1978 Bethesda meeting was almost 25 years, a generation, ago right?. The profession is becoming focused, yet we don't have a single focused professional organization. In some ways we are stuck in the past.
We need an AHEA, a health education AMA, to play a stronger role in supporting certification and licensure with a single voice, so that other professionals know who we are, what we do, and what role we play on the health team. We need one voice, making sure that they understand that they need to stay off of our turf. We need an AHEA, a "health education AMA," so consumers know us and know that we are key to the success in prevention, health promotion and wellness. We need an AHEA to get the message out, and market our profession!
Even as membership in groups like AAHE consider board members or officers who promise to market and protect the profession (where did they get that idea?), it is unlikely that they will get far as they are part of an "Alliancce." Would the Alliance allow it? What real power does an elected member have, would anyone listen, and do consumers, an important target of AHEA marketing, know what AAHE represents? Does it matter that AAHE is part of something massive, not being independent? When has AAHE had permission to carry out a concerted/strategic effort to protect only health educators when, after all, many physical educators have fought to keep things as they were. Even SOPHE, with the finest health education journals in the world, is stuck in its herstory: a former board member told me that she wouldn't want to be seen at a meeting with "those health educators who wear shorts all the time; I like the smallness of our small group. It's fine with me!"^ Small time thinking in a time that requires radical action to keep a struggling profession alive and well!
Don't rely on the coalition: Coalitions are fine, but can't perform or act like an AHEA, an independent association --which coalition member gets to answer the call from someone (let's say a TV producer in Hollywood. This DID happened, and he called the AMA!) looking for a health education advisor? Will it be a SOPHE health educator, an AAHE health educator, an ACHA health educator?? Which name would be sent, who would send it, and which vested interested would be marketed?
We need to take the next step, create AHEA as the one defining professional association, and/or merge the smaller groups into one. It must be NOW! It's time for a revolution. It's time to take action! If you're a professionally prepared health education practitioner looking for help in protecting your turf, and/or seeking real time tools and support, you need to join the AHEA revolution. If not now, when? If not AHEA, what? If not YOU, whom? "
^statement made by an academician, and, in my huimble opinion, not totally aware of what it's really like out there!
|
