Health Promotion: Societal and Community Advocacy

Catalog description

The Health Promotion: Societal and Community Advocacy course is designed to enable the occupational therapy student to learn and develop the skills necessary to transform communities into healthier societies. Students learn to incorporate occupational therapy theory and frameworks with local, national and global societal health initiatives to address health policy, health systems and health equity factors. Students incorporate a client-centered approach to advocating and promoting health at the individual, community and organization level with all stakeholders. Students expose the voice of community members and cultivate inter-professional and cross-collaborative approaches for meeting population health needs and addressing health disparities. A major focus of this course is the students’ ability to examine client factors, culture, contexts, the environment and health determinants for understanding sociocultural norms related to epidemiology, prevention, chronic disease, injury, disability, trauma, substance abuse, violence, maternal and child and healthy lifestyles for social, emotional and physical well-being. Students learn to apply health promotion theories, models and evidence based practice strategies with traditional, innovative, high-impact and technology-based approaches for health promotion program planning and program evaluation that meet the diverse needs of local, national and global society. Prerequisite Course(s): Prerequisites: OCTH 604, OCTH 616 Corequisites: OCTH 701