By the end of the course the student will have:
- Demonstrated an understanding of the following theories of motivating individual health behavior: health belief model, transtheoretical model/stages of change, reasoned action/planned behavior.
- Demonstrated an understanding of the following intrapersonal health behavior models: social cognitive theory, social networks and social support, and patient-provider communication.
- Demonstrated an understanding of community and group intervention models of health behavior change including diffusion of innovations, community building and empowerment, and communication theory and health behavior change/media.
- Demonstrated an understanding of the use of the following in program planning: precede-proceed model, social marketing, and ecological models.
- Demonstrated an understanding of educational theory and techniques in terms of implementing and evaluating learning.
- Demonstrated an understanding of the multifactorial nature of food behaviors including the influences of culture, media, economics, knowledge and attitudes about food purchasing and preparation, and literacy.
- Demonstrated an understanding of communication at the individual, group, media, and community level and be able to state factors that enhance and inhibit nutrition related communication
By the end of the course the student will have:
- Critically assessed the applicability of major theoretical approaches to health promotion and behavior change to nutrition behaviors.
- Critically assessed media based approaches to nutrition information, specifically as presented on the World Wide Web.
- Used basic web authoring tools to create a nutrition education web site that meets basic web design concepts for establishing credibility.
- Practiced public speaking by presenting a theory-based nutrition education session for a group.
- Used a social marketing approach to develop and evaluate a nutrition education tool.
- Established a portfolio of resources for nutrition education.