INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME MESSAGE

Health Psychology (PSYC 216)

Three diverse women smiling and jogging together along a tree-lined park path, reflecting health promotion and community well-being.

Health psychologists study how psychological factors and diverse socio-cultural environments influence everyday behaviors, helping to reduce allostatic load, promote health equity, and foster lifelong community resilience.

Welcome to Health Psychology! I am incredibly excited to guide you through this course, not just as your instructor, but as someone whose entire life and career have been shaped by the exact concepts we will study over the next few weeks.

Health Psychology is a relatively new field dedicated to understanding what makes us healthy or unhealthy. Historically, medicine looked at the body like a machine—strictly biological. Today, we know that true health is biopsychosocial, determined by a complex interplay of our biology, our psychological frameworks, and our social environments.

Why This Field is Personal to Me

My passion for this discipline is deeply rooted in my own lived experience and identity. I sit at the intersection of multiple distinct identities: I am African American, a woman, openly gay, and navigating the unique space of aging. For a long time, these were just the facts of my life. However, it wasn’t until my late 30s that a profound realization struck me: the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) I went through had actively written themselves into my physical health status. I came to understand how chronic psychological stress directly influenced my own risk factors for chronic conditions, including my struggles with infertility.

Our bodies keep score of our lives, and my journey is a living testament to how psychological history directly impacts physiological outcomes.

Lessons from the Field

Before coming to academia, my career took me into the trenches of healthcare across a wide array of clinical settings:

  • Skilled Nursing Facilities & Rehabilitation: Where I witnessed the psychological toll of aging and physical recovery.

  • Palliative Care: Where quality of life, emotional coping, and dignity intersect at the end of life.

  • Infectious Diseases: Notably working on the frontlines of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, combating both a virus and massive societal stigma.

  • Addictions Treatment: Facing the complex realities of behavioral health and neurobiology.

Through these varied experiences, I developed a profound respect for cultural variations in how we conceptualize health, pain, and treatment. More importantly, I saw the systemic ugly truths: the severe obstacles diverse groups face in accessing preventative care, a widespread lack of provider understanding regarding specific risk factors for marginalized populations, and the heartbreaking disparities in the actual level of care these populations receive.

This course is designed to empower you to see these gaps—and to become agents of change committed to preventing, alleviating, or contributing toward solutions for equitable health outcomes.

Course Reference & Syllabus Summary PSYC 216 Health Psychology.

Proposed Course Revision Materials

1. New Course Description

PSYC 216: Health Psychology This course provides a comprehensive survey of psychological theory, research, and clinical applications within health and illness, utilizing an advanced biopsychocultural framework. Students will explore the dynamic interplay between biological systems, psychological processes, and socio-cultural determinants—such as ethnic identity, systemic discrimination, and diverse medical traditions—on health outcomes. Key areas of evaluation include the physiological and psychological impacts of psychosocial adversity, environmental determinants of allostatic load, and variations in cultural coping mechanisms. Additional focus is placed on theories of health behavior change; psychological dimensions of pain; chronic and terminal conditions (including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and HIV/AIDS); patient-practitioner communication barriers; and the implementation of gender-affirming care. Emphasizing cultural competence and emerging frontiers, the course equips students to analyze health disparities, critique digital health innovations, and evaluate contemporary interventions aimed at promoting equitable healthcare delivery.

2. New Student Learning Objectives (SLOs)

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

  • Analyze foundational frameworks: Critique and apply the biopsychosocial and biopsychocultural models to explain the transition from traditional biomedical paradigms to modern health psychology.

  • Evaluate empirical research methods: Demonstrate the ability to locate, critically evaluate, and synthesize peer-reviewed health psychology research, with specific emphasis on the ethics and design of cross-cultural and epidemiological studies.

  • Synthesize physiological and psychological systems: Explain the bidirectional pathways between socio-cultural adversity (including marginalization, perceived discrimination, and adverse childhood experiences) and major physiological networks, including the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems.

  • Appraise diverse medical and cultural traditions: Compare Western biomedicine with pluralistic healing traditions (e.g., Traditional Indian Medicine, Curanderismo, American Indian Medicine) to evaluate their unique conceptualizations of health, illness, and pain management.

  • Apply behavioral change models: Compare, contrast, and apply major behavioral theories—such as the Transtheoretical Model, Health Belief Model, and Theory of Planned Behavior—to design targeted health-promoting interventions.

  • Assess psychosocial impacts of major illnesses: Analyze the psychological, social, and cultural variables influencing the incidence, progression, and management of chronic and terminal disorders, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and immune-related illnesses.

  • Formulate culturally competent healthcare strategies: Evaluate communication barriers, stereotyping, and systemic inequalities within institutional healthcare settings to propose solutions that enhance patient adherence and advance cultural competence in clinical practice.

Brief Contents

To guide your learning, our interactive lectures, class discussions, assignments, real-world projects, and Open Educational Resource (OER) readings are dynamically integrated into five core instructional modules:

  • PART I. FOUNDATIONS OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY

  • PART II. PSYCHOSOCIAL ADVERSITY, HEALTH EQUITY, AND RESILIENCE

  • PART III. HEALTH BEHAVIORS

  • PART IV. FACTORS SURROUNDING ILLNESS

  • PART V. MAJOR ILLNESS & EMERGING FRONTIERS