1a. Introduction

Welcome to HLTH 617, Population Interventions for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion!

The content of this course builds upon an earlier version of the course developed by Dr. Paul McDonald in 2006. The present course author acknowledges the solid conceptual foundation laid by Dr. McDonald, which made it easier to expand and update the course in order to better reflect current trends and issues in population health practice.

The aim of this course is to increase your capacity to effectively plan, implement, and evaluate public health interventions for addressing the behavioural and social risk factors for chronic diseases. By the end of the course, I hope that you will be able to:

  1. Identify the key chronic diseases affecting the health of populations;
  2. Describe how behavioural risk factors and the social determinants of health are related to chronic disease outcomes;
  3. Differentiate between individual or clinical interventions and population level interventions;
  4. Describe various theories guiding the development of population health interventions and the evidence supporting the application of these theories;
  5. Describe various types of population health interventions (e.g., health communication campaigns) and the evidence supporting the application of these interventions;
  6. Apply theory and evidence, including community data, to develop a hypothetical plan in response to a selected population health issue that includes an appropriate mix of population health interventions; and
  7. Understand the methods and major challenges associated with evaluating and disseminating the results of population health interventions.

A range of public health issues, including tobacco use, alcohol and illicit drug abuse, food insecurity, preventable injuries, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), will be used to illustrate concepts and develop skills.

Your ability to master the material will come from three complementary sources:

  1. Online modules, starting with the one you are reading now, are designed to highlight important material and concepts. Readings from the text, websites, and other assigned material have been chosen to expand and elaborate material in the modules.
  2. Readings, both required and optional, are critical for understanding the concepts in the course and should, therefore, be part of your weekly learning activities. Optional readings are intended for those who want to know more about a topic or explore alternative perspectives. I encourage you to read the optional material whenever you can.
  3. You will complete a single iterative assignment, rather than a series of different tasks, in stages or “iterations” over time. This means that you will have an opportunity to submit an assignment, receive feedback, and then use that feedback for your final assignment. This method of grading was selected to closely replicate how public health professionals in the field actually plan population health interventions

Course Textbook and Readings

The required textbook for the course is Planning Health Promotion Programs: An Intervention Mapping Approach, by Kay Bartholomew Eldredge and her colleagues. We will use the fourth edition of the book, published in 2016.

I apologize for how expensive the textbook is. However, I hope that you will find it to be a useful resource, not only for this course, but also for your professional lives.

Textbook Cover: Planning Health Promotion Programs, Fourth Edition

As I mentioned earlier, I have also collected a series of readings for you. All of the readings are available through online Course Reserves. Course Reserves can be accessed using the Library Resources widget on the Course Home page. Please let the preceptor and I know as soon as possible if you have any problem accessing the reading materials. We will do our best to solve any problems that arise.

Although you will not be examined on any of the readings per se, keeping up with the readings will help you gain the most knowledge from each of the online modules.

I strongly encourage you to set aside between three and eight hours a week for reading. The reading load is fairly heavy at the beginning of the course, but it eases considerably near the end. This was done intentionally. It will enable you to quickly get up to speed on several important topics. The reduced reading load at the end provides you with more time to work on your final assignment.

Course Assignments

At this point you may want to stop and print a hard copy of the course outline. I’d like to review the course assignments with you and clarify some key expectations.