224.689.01 HEALTH BEHAVIOR CHANGE AT THE INDIVIDUAL, HOUSEHOLD AND COMMUNITY LEVELS

Provides students with conceptual tools to analyze health-related behaviors and the social, cultural and environmental context in which they occur. Applies concepts and theories drawn from medical anthropology, psychology and sociology to programmatic examples from Latin America, Africa and Asia concerning care-seeking, treatment of sick children, insecticide-treated mosquito nets, voluntary counseling and testing, sexual risk behaviors, intimate partner violence and other behavior change challenges in public health.

By the end of the course students should be able to: 1) describe conceptual tools drawn from medical anthropology pertinent to design of behavior change interventions including standards of efficacy, illness taxonomies, illness etiology, levels of causality, meanings of medication, public and private domains, social risk and gender roles; 2) identify and map the key components of common models of health behavior change at the individual level, and difficulties encountered when trying to apply them in different cultural contexts; 3) describe psychological and anthropological perspectives on risk perceptions, and models of diffusion of innovations and influence of the mass media and apply to specific case studies; 4) be familiar with basic terminology for describing households, kinship systems, communities and social capital and identify their significance for public health interventions; 5) understand the basic components of the intervention modalities, including Social Marketing, Peer Education, Counseling, Harm Reduction, Diffusion of Innovation, and Community Mobilization; 6) integrate the major theories covered in class with the various interventions modalities presented; and 7) apply appropriate combinations of theoretically based intervention modalities to case studies.