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Health Promotion: Individuals and Communities

Office Hours, the companion podcast for HSCI 312

Each episode is a conversation between Sarah and Kiffer about one lesson of the course. Every episode page has the audio with a visual companion and captions, a short summary, a list of chapters and a downloadable transcript.

Foundations: health, behaviour, and theory

Lessons 01–02

The Links Between Health and BehaviorSarah and Kiffer sort motives and ecological influences, test whether a cycling package connects, and catch a youth violence package whose suspension rule undercuts its own community program.

Social Behavioral Theory and Its RootsSarah and Kiffer test theories with Popper's falsification, debate whether the empirical standard is enough, and find two program parts built on conflicting schools of psychology.

Theories of health behaviour

Lessons 03–06

Individual Health Behavior TheoriesSarah and Kiffer sort constructs that students often confuse, test whether changing beliefs changes behaviour, plan heat preparedness with a stage model, and debate whether stages are real.

Social, Cultural, and Environmental Theories ISarah and Kiffer sort Social Cognitive Theory constructs, question whether network clustering shows influence, rethink a peer naloxone program, and debate whom diffusion should reach first.

Social, Cultural, and Environmental Theories IISarah and Kiffer work through encoding, organizational change, syndemics and cultural explanations, plan communication for a syndemic, and debate who pays for sugary drink levies.

Multilevel Theories and the Ecological PerspectiveSarah and Kiffer sort factors into Bronfenbrenner's systems, separate prediction from explanation, plan for extreme heat with PRECEDE, and choose risk and protective factors to target.

From theory to practice

Lessons 07–09

Communities, Populations, and SettingsSarah and Kiffer sort prevention programs, work through Rose's prevention paradox, interpret small effects in community trials, assess a worksite, and debate adapting evidence-based programs.

Communications CampaignsSarah and Kiffer examine exposure, construct choice, Hornik's model types and messages that backfire across segments, then debate when fear appeals belong in health campaigns.

Global Health ApplicationsSarah and Kiffer test how theories travel to global settings, place an invented case in the AIDS Risk Reduction Model, and follow a measles campaign into long-term prevention.

Populations, equity, and evaluation

Lessons 10–11

High-Risk Populations, Culture, and Health DisparitiesSarah and Kiffer test output theories, harm reduction and generative schema on invented cases, then work out whether culture or housing explains a made-up asthma disparity.

Evaluation and Careers in Health PromotionSarah and Kiffer separate failed theories from failed delivery, build and fix a logic model, test what a comparison group can show, and debate model-program requirements.