Clinical Health Psychology II: Health Promotion

Catalog description

The purpose of this course is to present an overview of health-promoting behaviors from the perspective of clinical health psychology. This course emphasizes changing behaviors to improve health and prevent disease. Psychological approaches for conceptualizing and changing behaviors to improve health represent the major focus of the course. While the primary focus of the course is intervention at the individual and group level, public health approaches that focus on change at the community or organizational level are reviewed, and we will touch upon the contributions of sociology, epidemiology, medicine, political science and economics to understanding health and illness. The specific topics chosen for in-depth exploration during the course comprise the major health issues facing our population, namely, obesity, nutrition, physical activity, and the use of tobacco. The behavioral antecedents of major diseases, particularly alcohol, opioid, and other drug misuse, heart disease and cancer are examined, by reviewing epidemiological and population-based studies of associations between behavioral and psychosocial variables and the occurrence of chronic disease conditions and decreased longevity. Behavioral interventions to modify risk factors for disease, including the clinical trial data supporting their efficacy, and their application in the practice of clinical health psychology are explored and discussed.