Curriculum

This course provides students with an overview of the major chronic diseases that are highly preventable and manageable through lifestyle and behavioral changes. Using the United States Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotions Healthy People 2020 Framework, students will gain an understanding of the distribution, etiology, costs, prevention and management of these chronic diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, cancer and mental health disorders. Students will also become familiar with concepts of health disparities and their role in the distribution and prevention of chronic disease. In addition, theoretical foundations for health behavior change and disease prevention program design will be introduced. In the latter half of the course, students will work in small groups to apply course content by researching and presenting information on evidence-based approaches to prevention of a specific chronic disease, within the context of their graduate concentration area.

In this course, students will learn to systematically assess and analyze the health promotion needs of a specified target population at the individual, community and organizational levels. Students will learn to develop a holistic, theoretically-based and culturally appropriate comprehensive program to address identified health needs of a population, and create thorough program implementation plans and systematic methods to evaluate the effectiveness of the health promotion program. Students will also gain an understanding of effective health communication strategies used in health promotion programs with an opportunity to practice these communication skills.

This course examines the application of marketing principles, provides students with an overview of concepts and strategies used in social marketing and public health information campaigns; emphasizes skills to create audience-oriented health intervention efforts, including formative research, audience segmentation, channel analysis and the application of behavioral theory.

The Capstone Project is the culminating academic endeavor of students who earn a degree from the School of Health Sciences Graduate Program at Merrimack College. The project provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate their independent ability to produce meaningful professional products that evaluate and/or address real-world issues or client needs within their field. The final Capstone product, consisting of a professional development plan and reflection paper, e-portfolio and professional presentation of that e-portfolio, should demonstrate the student’s ability to synthesize and apply the knowledge and skills acquired in his/her academic program to professional contexts within their field. This Capstone Project should affirm students’ ability to think critically and creatively, to solve practical problems, to make reasoned and ethical decisions, and to communicate effectively. The purpose of the Capstone course itself is two-fold: to provide structure and pacing for graduate students who are completing the Capstone Project, and to create a learning community in which students will share their capstone work with others to gain constructive feedback and to generate ideas about the best ways to approach project content and structure. The seminar format of this class means that students should come prepared to discuss their own work, as well as to carefully consider their peers’ work and offer insights relating to how projects can be improved.