Steps for strengthening the health education profession.

Since its founding in 1950, the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) has evolved in response to the changing needs of both the public and the profession. This SOPHE Presidential Address provides a brief review of SOPHE's history and the legacy of its achievements over some 60 years. It also describes how new challenges being created by the pending organizational realignment between SOPHE and the American Association for Health Education, which promises to further unify the profession, along with changing American community demographics, can provide an opportunity for SOPHE to strengthen the health education profession by becoming more inclusive and further redefining Dorothy Nyswander's concept of the "Open Society" and the role health educators play as agents of change.