Assignment: Professional Organizations for Public Health Education

Professional organizations play a crucial role in public health education. These organizations provide employment opportunities for public health educators, supply essential information about current trends in public health education, and support members through a range of educational opportunities.

Professional groups for public health education offer a wide spectrum of goals and membership benefits. For instance, from the Society for Public Health Education’s (SOPHE) website, its mission “is to provide global leadership to the profession of public health education and health promotion and to promote the health of society” (“Our Mission,” n.d., para. 1). In addition to its general goals, SOPHE provides members with access to multiple public health education publications and working groups of peers called Communities of Practice.

For this Assignment, you explore professional organizations for public health education.

To prepare for this Assignment:

• Research different professional health organizations (the American Public Health Association [APHA] and Society for Public Health Education [SOPHE] websites are good starting points).
• Using the Professional Health Organization Matrix, record information about the missions, membership qualifications, structures, membership benefits, potential reasons for joining, and costs of membership of at least three organizations that are of interest to you.
• Based on this research and your own interests, select an organization you might like to join and consider why it would appeal to you.

To complete this Assignment:

• On the Professional Health Organization Matrix, record information for at least three different professional health organizations.
• In 1–2 pages, describe aspects of one organization that is of particular interest or relevance to you. Explain whether or not you would consider becoming a member of this organization and why. What are some of the benefits that appeal to you?

Note: Submit your Assignment as a single Word document.

Your written assignments must follow APA guidelines. Be sure to support your work with specific citations from this week’s Learning Resources and additional scholarly sources as appropriate.