HEALTH PROMOTION: INJURIES, SMOKING AND ALCOHOL AND DRUG USE

A. Health Promotion
1. The role of behavioral factors in health and adjustment
2. Health behaviors and health habits
  a. Risk factors
  b. Protective factors
3. Health promotion
  a. Reducing illness by promoting wellness
  b. Primary and secondary prevention
    (1) Educational programs
    (2) Using the mass media
    (3) Health care programs
  c. Barriers
    (1) Institutional
    (2) Societal
    (3) Personal

B. Preventing Injuries
1. Unintentional injuries
  a. Causes and statistics
  b. Age-related patterns
    (1) Children
    (2) Adolescents
    (3) Adults
    (4) The elderly
  c. Risk factors
  d. Reducing risk
    (1) Individual change
    (2) Environmental change
    (3) Legal change
2. Intentional injuries
  a. Violence against others
    (1) Assault
    (2) Rape
    (3) Homicide
  b. Self-inflicted violence
    (1) Suicide
    (2) Self-injuring behavior
  c. Age and gender-related factors
  d. Reducing risk
     (1) Domestic violence
    (2) Violence in schools, the workplace and the streets
    (3) Suicide prevention
    (4) Individual vs. societal approaches

C. Smoking
1. How smoking affects the body
2. Effects on health
  a. CVD
  b. Pulmonary diseases
  c. Cancer
  d. Other
3. Statistics
  a. Patterns of use over time
  b. Demographics: who smokes?
4. “Passive” (second-hand) smoking
5. The psychology of smoking
  a. Initiation
    (1) Peer pressure
    (2) Generational conflict
    (3) Misinformation and denial
  b. Maintenance
    (1) Social learning factors: tension reduction
    (2) Cognitive factors: optimistic bias
    (3) Nicotine addiction
  c. Relapse
6. Interventions
  a. Prevention
    (1) Educational methods
    (2) Legal and financial methods
  b. Smoking cessation
    (1) “Cold turkey”
    (2) Nicotine replacement
    (3) Behavioral methods
    (4) Relapse prevention
  c. Results
    (1) Who succeeds and who fails?
    (2) What works?
    (3) What are the benefits of success?

D. Alcohol and Other Drugs
1. Alcohol and health
  a. Consumption past and present
  b. Patterns of alcohol use
  c. The pharmacology of alcohol
    (1) Intoxication
    (2) Tolerance
    (3) Withdrawal
  d. Psychological and physiological dependence
  e. Effects on health
    (1) Direct negative effects
    (2) Indirect negative effects
    (3) Alcohol as a health benefit
2. Explaining alcohol use and misuse
  a. Use, abuse and dependence
    (1) Characteristics of abuse
    (2) The alcohol dependence syndrome
  b. The moral model
  c. The disease model
    (1) Assumptions
    (2) Evidence
  d. Psychosocial perspectives
    (1) Self-medication, tension-reduction and stress-response dampening
    (2) Cognitive factors: information processing and alcohol myopia
    (3) Social learning: modeling and positive and negative reinforcement
3. Interventions to change drinking behavior
  a. The goals
    (1) Abstinence models: AA
    (2) Harm reduction models: controlled drinking
  b. The methods
    (1) Unassisted vs. professional assistance
    (2) Drug methods
    (3) Psychotherapy
    (4) Behavioral methods: aversion therapy, behavioral contracting
    (5) Relapse prevention
4. Other drugs
  a. Classifying drugs
    (1) Sedatives, barbiturates and anti-anxiety drugs
    (2) Stimulants
    (3) Marijuana and hallucinogenic drugs
    (4) The opiates
    (5) Steroids
  b. Effects
    (1) Are drugs always harmful?
    (2) Are drugs addictive?
  c. Preventing drug use, abuse and dependence
    (1) Criminal justice approaches
    (2) Public health approaches

Copyright ©1998 Beverly J. Volicer and Steven F. Tello, UMass Lowell.  You may freely edit these pages  for use in a non-profit, educational setting.  Please include this copyright notice on all pages.