Building a Larger Tent for Public Health

Abstract

The unification of the American Association for Health Education (AAHE) and the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) generates a long-desired synergy, a ramping up of our leadership influence in promoting health. It also serves as an ongoing opportunity to reflect on how we synergize the distinct philosophic, scientific, and practical approaches that our AAHE colleagues bring in constructing a larger tent for public health education. Running parallel to our union with AAHE is the undertaking by several schools of health, physical education, and recreation (HPER) to become schools of public health. The unification between AAHE and SOPHE can be of enormous benefit to such a process. Just as the harmonious integration of two organizations with similar but distinct perspectives depends on compromise and transcendence, the schools that they embody—both public health and HPER—might consider ways to engage in continued dialogue to assure a more expansive paradigm for public health. SOPHE has an important role to play in this process, and with the additional insight and influence that our AAHE colleagues bring, we can become more instrumental as a boundary spanner. Mechanisms for such integration are discussed.