Familiarity with Lessor Known HE Entities

When I recall my early years as a practicing health educator, I did not know much about national organizations to which health educators commonly hold membership.  It took a decade or more of teaching at the university-level and participating in the meetings of several health education organizations to begin to get some in depth knowledge of such entities as the Coalition of National Health Education Organizations (CNHEO), the National Center for Health Education (NCHE), and North American Regional Organization (NARO) of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE).  Of course, I helped launch the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC) in 1988, so I gained an intimate knowledge of it at its earliest stages of development.

As I reflect on how poorly I understood the professional organizations with health educators as members when I was early in my career, I wonder how familiar early career health educators of today are with such entities as CNHEO, NCHE, NARO/IUHPE, and NCHEC.  Of course, they can readily visit the websites of these entities, a luxury that did not exist during my early career.   Hopefully, the professional preparation programs are strongly encouraging aspiring health educators to gain knowledge of these and the professional organizations that hold membership in CNHEO.

The web addresses for some of these HE entities are:

www.cnheo.org, www.nche.org, and www.nchec.org