{"id":4,"date":"2020-05-18T16:00:57","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T16:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-hvcc-healthpsychology\/2020\/05\/18\/introduction\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T03:54:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T03:54:22","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"front-matter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-hvcc-healthpsychology\/front-matter\/introduction\/","title":{"raw":"INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME MESSAGE","rendered":"INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME MESSAGE"},"content":{"raw":"
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Health Psychology (PSYC 216)<\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"260\"]\"Three 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.[\/caption]\r\n

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.<\/p>\r\n

Health Psychology<\/i> is a relatively new field dedicated to understanding what makes us healthy or unhealthy. Historically, medicine looked at the body like a machine\u2014strictly biological. Today, we know that true health is biopsychosocial<\/b>, determined by a complex interplay of our biology, our psychological frameworks, and our social environments.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Why This Field is Personal to Me<\/h2>\r\n

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.<\/p>\r\n

Our bodies keep score of our lives, and my journey is a living testament to how psychological history directly impacts physiological outcomes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Lessons from the Field<\/h2>\r\n

Before coming to academia, my career took me into the trenches of healthcare across a wide array of clinical settings:<\/p>\r\n\r\n