Prevention and intervention strategies in health psychology

Teacher(s)

Agrigoroaei Stefan; Luminet Olivier; Van den Broucke Stephan (coordinator);

Language

English
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Main themes

The goal of this course is to allow a deeper understanding of prevention and intervention strategies, methods, and instruments developed in health psychology, especially in terms of their efficiency and use in specific subpopulations.
Examples of topics :

• Planning, implementation, and evaluation of behavior change interventions
• Health interventions in minorities
• The settings-based approaches to health promotion (schools, organizations, cities)
• Self-management in patients with chronic illness
• Health promotion in older adults, from a lifespan perspective
• Mental health promotion
• Doctor-patient relationship
• The role of the partner for the treatment of chronic diseases
• Health inequalities

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	This course integrates theoretical models, empirical results, as well as strategies and methods specific to health psychology in order to address advanced questions related to psychological and behavioral health factors and to help students identify and select the appropriate, efficient intervention and prevention strategies. At the end of this course students will be able to analyze the psychological and behavioral health factors at the individual and population levels (A2). At the end of this course students are expected to know and operate with the health psychology concepts (A1) and use this knowledge to examine the psychological and behavioral factors specific to a given health issue/population (A2). Students will be able to search additional, appropriate pieces of information, use hypothetic-deductive and inductive reasoning (E1), and display critical thinking while performing literature reviews (E2). Moreover, students will acquire the necessary tools to search and integrate additional information in order to optimize their analysis and diagnosis processes (A2). Based on their analyses, students should be able to identify the appropriate interventions given the social, legal, political, economic, and cultural factors (B2), to distinguish between scientific and commonsense approaches (E2), and to describe the methodology that corresponds to the planning, design, and evaluation of the interventions. Students will be able to communicate in a clear, relevant, and straightforward way the result of their observations, analyses and interventions (C1-C2).

Content

This course aims to deepen the students' knowledge of strategies, concepts and methods in health psychology by focusing on a series of topics and questions related to issues, target groups or approaches that pose specific challengesn, with a particular focus on their effectiveness. Examples of topics to be covered in this course include
- The relationship between the practitioner and the patient;
- The inclusion of the spouse in the treatment of chronic disease;
- Self-management of chronic illness;
- Health psychology intervention with cultural minority patients;
- Environmental health promotion (school, company, municipality' );
- Health inequalities;
- Health promotion for the elderly;
- Mental health promotion.

Teaching methods

The course consists mainly of lectures with an invitation to the students to actively participate in the form of questions and answers.
Each session will be devoted to a specific theme in (preventive or clinical) health psychology. Students will be asked to read a scientific article of their choice related to one of the themes, and to prepare a short presentation containing a summary and a critical review of the article in relation to the course content.

Evaluation methods

The evaluation consists of an individual project (25% of the final grade) and a written exam (multiple choice ; 75% of the final grade).The Multiple Choice exam consists of 30 questions with 4 answer options. One point is awarded for each correct answer and no points are awarded for no answer or incorrect answers.
Participation in both parts of the evaluation is required to validate the course. The evaluation modalities remain the same for all sessions of the same academic year.

Other information

The Health Psychology course (LPSP1301) or equivalent is required

Online resources

The Powerpoint presentations of the teachers as well as lists of suggested reading are provided on the Moodle platform

Faculty or entity

> EPSY