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Sep 01, 2025
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Fall 2025 Health Sciences Catalog
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HPH 550 - Theories of Health Behavior and Communication
In this survey theory course, students learn about the major health behavior and health communication theories that are used in population health research and practice. Rather than simply cataloguing each theory in turn, this course takes a constant, comparative, approach to the learning of theories, in which theories are dissected to their core elements and compared to each other in order to understand the points of convergence and divergence among them. The goal in taking this comparative approach is application: by knowing the core elements of various theories, students will more easily be able to choose appropriate theories to explain population health problems of interest and consider the design of interventions that are appropriate to achieve improvementsin the educational, behavioral and environmental factorsthat may contribute to the problem. In addition to covering traditional individual-level behavior change and health communication theories, this course will focus on social change and systems theories, challenging students to think about the role of social context and systems on health behavior and health communication to achieve population health improvements. Finally, after learning about commonlyused theories in the field of public health, students will learn about and critique theories that are less-commonly used (such as new and emerging theories in the literature) and have important implications for future research, practice, and further theory development and testing among populations.
3 credits
Prerequisite(s): Admission to Graduate Public Health Program and Department Consent
Grading Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)
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