Health Promotion and Wellness: Expanding Your Practice Paradigm

July 25-26, 2009 - Bondurant Hall on UNC-Chapel Hill campus

Course Description:

The number of people who practice healthy behaviors regularly is alarmingly low, leading to chronic diseases that have become a primary cause of death and disability in the U.S. Most of these diseases are preventable with a variety of interventions that physical therapists employ everyday. How do you motivate your clients to participate in prevention and wellness efforts? How do prevention and wellness approaches differ from traditional physical therapist or biomedical approaches? Should they be different? What constitutes a wellness program and how can you build one that will be successful and contribute to reducing the burden of chronic disease for your clients and society? These issues will be explored in this course as well as others related to the development, marketing, implementation and assessment of health promotion and wellness programs.

Objectives:

• Differentiate among the terms prevention/health promotion/health education/risk reduction/wellness/quality of life.
• Describe wellness theory and compare it with a biomedical model.
• Identify, apply, and interpret measures of wellness and quality of life.
• Apply theories of behavior change to individuals and populations using an evidence-based approach to enhance motivation and adherence.
• Identify and describe the multilevel influences on a patient’s/client’s health consistent with an ecological model.
• Incorporate health promotion and wellness concepts into the physical therapist patient management model.
• Increase personal self-efficacy to promote wellness with individual patients, within individual practices, and within society.

Faculty:

Janet R Bezner, PT, PhD, received her bachelor's degree at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, her master's degree from Texas Woman's University, and a PhD in health education from the University of Texas. Prior to joining APTA in May 2005 as the senior vice president for education, she was senior vice president for PeakCare, Inc, a health care technology firm, where she managed the development of a wellness and prevention software and video library aimed at employers to assist in decreasing health care costs associated with illness and injury at work. Bezner spent 7 years teaching physical therapy at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) in San Marcos and has practiced in a variety of settings,including hospitals, home health, long term-care and corporate wellness. She served on the Board of Directors of the American Physical Therapy Association prior to joining staff.

MarySue Ingman, PT, MS, is a doctoral candidate in the Health Promotion and Wellness Program at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions. Her areas of research interest are in obesity and physical activity. Her dissertation topic is the relationship of physical activity levels to quality of life in individuals who have had weight loss surgery. She is a full time assistant professor and assistant director of Clinical Education at the College of St. Catherine Doctor of Physical Therapy Program in Minneapolis, MN. MarySue received both her BS and MS degrees in Physical Therapy from the University of Minnesota.

Course schedule:

Registration Saturday begins at 7:30 with continental breakfast.
The course includes 15 contact hours over two days, beginning each day at 8am and continuing until 5pm. Lunch is scheduled each day from 12-1pm.
Lunch each day will be on your own.

Preparing for the Course:

The presenters ask that you complete three pre-course readings and self-administer three surveys: RealAge test, Perceived Wellness Survey, and the SF-36 (MOS Short Form). For information on how to access these materials, click here. Bring your survey results with you to the course.

Registration Fees:

$349 APTA members

$529 non-APTA members

We recommend you register early for this course. Due to the individualized nature of instruction, course size is limited. To register (go to  the APTA website) or use this registration form.

Return to the continuing education home page for directions, parking, accomodations.