Course description
This course provides students with knowledge of current concepts in health and wellness. Students learn how to promote healthy behaviour, build healthy lifestyles, and prevent disease. Assessment of personal health status, strategies for how to maintain physical activity, and avoidance of harmful habits are investigated.
Course content
- Health and wellness
- Historical and contemporary definitions of health
- Dimensions of wellness
- The social determinants of health
- Behaviour change
- Models and theories of behaviour change
- Personal responsibility for prevention
- Roles of attitude, social influences, and self-efficacy
- The Canadian healthcare system
- The background of universal medicine in Canada
- Role of Canadian health professionals
- Health literacy
- Psychosocial health
- Psychosocial health and its components
- External and internal factors that influence psychosocial health
- Roles of mental health professionals
- Coping with stress
- Stress, stressors, and stress reaction
- General Adaptation Syndrome
- Stress management techniques
- Personal fitness
- Components of health-related fitness
- Basic exercise prescription
- Lifespan physical activity
- Physical activity, exercise, and sedentary behaviour
- Benefits of physical activity and the risks of inactivity
- Recommendations for physical activity promoted in Canada’s Physical Activity Guide for Healthy Active Living
- Nutrition
- Nutrition basics
- Malnutrition
- Food insecurity and the impact on health
- Weight management
- Energy balance
- Risk factors for obesity
- Understanding addictions
- Addiction
- The addictive process
- Treatments and recovery for addiction
- Drugs and alcohol
- Drug use, misuse, and abuse
- Canada's Low-Risk Alcohol Drinking Guidelines (LRADG)
- Canada’s Lower-Risk Cannabis Use Guidelines (LRCUG)
- Chronic diseases
- Heart disease and the risk factors
- Symptoms, causes, and risk factors for type 2 diabetes
- Lifestyle choices in preventing heart disease and type 2 diabetes
- Cancer
- The cancer process
- Cancer risk myths
- The role of infectious disease
- Infectious conditions
- Epidemiology
- Types of infectious diseases
- Indigenous Peoples and health
- Issues in epidemiology, interdisciplinary approaches, community, and Indigenous knowledge
- Health and the environment
- Healthy aging
- The biological and psychosocial theories of aging
- Physiological and psychological changes due to aging
- Health consumerism
- Methods for making informed health-care choices
- Critical evaluation of online sources of health information
Learning activities
Class time will be used for lectures, group discussions, and activities.
Means of assessment
Assessment will be in accordance with the Douglas College Evaluation Policy. The instructor will present a written course outline with specific evaluation criteria at the beginning of the semester. Evaluation will be based on the following:
| Test(s) |
15-30% |
| Assignments |
10-60% |
| Final Examination |
15-25% |
| Participation |
5-10% |
| Total |
100% |
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:
- define contemporary health concepts, including identifying the dimensions of wellness;
-
identify the factors that impact the health choices we make;
-
explain the leading causes of death and burden of disease in Canada and their associated risk factors;
-
explain the complex nature of determinants of health, including social and personal health determinants and how these relate to illness and disease;
-
summarize the principles of health behaviour change;
-
apply the principles of behaviour change to an intervention to promote a healthy lifestyle and/or prevent disease;
-
critically analyze health information and consumer issues;
-
explain the impact of the Canadian healthcare system on health outcomes.
Textbook materials
Consult the Douglas College Bookstore for the latest required textbooks and materials. Example textbooks and materials may include:
Kolen, A.M. (Current Edition). Personal Health and Fitness. Pearson Canada.