Becoming a health education profession: key to societal influence 1995 SOPHE presidential address.

The theme of the 1995 SOPHE annual meeting was power, politics, and prevention. Prevention is a recurring theme with health education, and although power and politics are less frequently occurring themes, these topics are discussed with increasing frequency in the literature, at conferences, and particularly over the internet. Understanding group dynamics and power is a basic skill of community health organization and development, and the study of groups is basic to the professional preparation of health educators. 1 Power within the study of groups can be viewed as the ability to influence others and classic descriptions of the ability to influence others include expert power, referent power, legitimate power, and power from the ability to reward and punish. 2 Key to influencing people is having status with those who are to be influenced, and the lack of sufficient societal influence by health education has been the most recurring theme that I have encountered during my term as president of SOPHE.