A comprehensive examination of the cultural, social and ecological effects environments that help shape health environments and behaviours provides important information and direction for health promoting strategies. Accordingly, understanding and respecting the beliefs, backgrounds, and broader social influences on health (and cultural understandings of health practices) and and how they impact a wide range of people are essential to the creation of a better kinesiology. In this course, students will learn about the interactions between society, environments, culture, and physical health and how to apply these understandings in the development of health promoting programming. Furthermore, students will develop their ability to conceptualize and critically analyze the complicated institutional relationships between personal health, health-care service and practice, and broader-scale structural determinants for effective, responsible, interdisciplinary client care. A mixture of lecture, problem-and-case based learning sessions, and assignments will be used to aid in development of knowledge and skills.

Course duration: • 12 weeks • 2-hour lecture/2-hour tutorial alternate weeks