CONN 320 | Health and Medicine

Drawing from the biological, behavioral, and social sciences, as well as ethics and public policy, this course provides the opportunity to explore intrinsic and extrinsic factors that contribute to and detract from health and human performance. By applying concepts and critical thinking processes developed in this course to personal lifestyle and political decisions, students are prepared to make more informed choices on emerging personal and policy issues related to health. The course emphasizes holistic approaches to understanding and preventing disease. Both allopathic and alternative interventions are explored. Major topics include defining health; therapeutic options including allopathic, complementary (e.g., homeopathy, Chinese medicine, etc.), and more experimental approaches (e.g., gene therapy); the central, somatic, and autonomic nervous systems; psychobiology; stress and stress management methods; approaches to prevention and treatment of conditions such as cancer and AIDS; issues in public policy and financing of mainstream and alternative healing approaches; ethical dilemmas such as informed consent, confidentiality, compliance, health care directives, allocation of resources, euthanasia, dying, grieving, and hospice.