The Stream

Health for All: Promoting Wellbeing, Preventing Disease, Protecting Health

The Public Health stream explores the biological, psychological, behavioral, political, and economic determinants of human health. Each student grows to become their team’s expert on a specific research methodology and mechanism influencing their interdisciplinary research problem. Thus, the public health stream provides a great opportunity for students interested in biology, psychology, health sciences, sociology, economics, environmental studies, political science, math and many other fields.

A sundial-shaped diagram with slices related to the scope of intervention: promotion, prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery.

Public health involves different intervention approaches that promote wellbeing, prevent disease, protect health, mitigate risk, respond to health emergencies, and recover from disease.

The field of public health targets health upstream before health problems require clinical care. For example, promoting mental wellbeing and preventing mental distress is more proactive than treating mental disorders. Community health can be improved by promoting safety and preventing violence rather than responding reactively or using punishment-oriented practices. Public and community health approaches use promotion and prevention, upstream, to address holistic health. Our research projects focus on applying the science of health promotion and prevention to cancer screenings, mental health, community violence, and food insecurity among college students, Broome County residents, and marginalized populations.

Research Themes

  • Health Promotion
  • Youth-Led Change
  • Violence Prevention
  • Mental Health
  • Health Justice

Research Topics

  1. Mental Health Conceptions
  2. Lifestyle Mental Health
  3. Technology on Mental Health
  4. Social Determinants of Mental Health
  5. Stigma and Mental Health

Research Techniques

All students are trained to:

  • Generate an Institutional Review Board Protocol for human subjects research

  • Conduct ethical and responsible human subjects research

  • Construct a survey questionnaire via Qualtrics to collect human subjects data on various attitudes, beliefs, and self-reported behaviors

  • Develop flyers, videos, presentation materials, and other recruitment materials for in-person tabling and digital communication

  • Recruit Binghamton students and Broome County community members to participate

  • Analyze quantitative data using statistical methods and data visualization techniques in R OR analyze qualitative data using open-ended survey responses, interviews or focus groups

  • Write a team manuscript in markdown and publish reproducible scientific reports

Some students are trained to:

  • Collect and analyze psychophysiological data using MUSE S and Fitbits

  • Design and deliver a health promotion/prevention program by logic modeling and following other intervention mapping steps

  • Design an online experimental task

  • Conduct community-based, participatory research

  • Design, code, and publish a web-based Shiny application

Courses

The FRI-PH stream includes three sequential courses: Research Methods (HARP170), Community Health Research Methods I (ANTH206), and Community Health Research Methods II (ANTH306). In the stream, students produce five deliverables:

  1. Team Poster using secondary data

  2. Individual Literature Review

  3. Team Study Proposal (with full IRB protocol)

  4. Individual Scientific Report

  5. Team Poster using primary data

Students learn qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods techniques to answer two research questions for their individual report, which is their individual contribution to the team poster.

Course Resources

Life after FRI

After completing the FRI program, select students continue as peer mentors (to earn course credit in “Practicum in college teaching” or an independent study).