Outline course
Why are people engaging in health behaviors or not? For instance, why do some people want to take a Covid-19 vaccine and others are hesitant or refusing to do so? Why are some people physically active and others are not? Why do some patients take their medication as prescribed and others do not? Why are some companies engaging in health promotion activities for their workers and others do not do this? What are important drivers for such decisions, what are important determinants? And how can we use that information to optimize our health communication strategies?

The goal of this intensive course is to provide an overview of relevant theoretical perspectives, taking the motivational approach as a starting point: how can we motivate individuals and organizations to adopt healthy behaviours and policies? We will look at a wide array of different health behaviors in this course. In the course we will particularly focus on the transition of theory into practice.

After following the course you will be able

• to critically examine key concepts of health communication for health promotion;
• to critically examine and being able to apply planning models;
• to identify and apply models to assess the motivational determinants of health behaviours;
• to apply principles of health communication intervention development;
• to design and critically appraise interventions;
• to reflect on co-creation and marketing strategies involving multiple stakeholders.

Course Format
We will use a problem based learning approach. So we will start by giving a lecture, followed by a case study showing how these principles can be applied. Then it is your turn: you will be working in small groups on a specific activity to apply these principles on a specific case study. During the activity all participants work in small groups to discuss and apply the theory to several relevant health problems. Besides this, we also will be playing a game, that has been shown to be real fun!

Course leaders
Prof. Hein de Vries, Professor in Health Communication, and Dr. Ilse Mesters, Associate Professor in Epidemiology and Health Promotion. Both work at School CAPHRI, Maastricht University, the Netherlands, and have been giving this and similar courses since the 90’s.

Location
The course will take place at the Open Medical Institute, Schloss Arenberg, Salzburg, Austria and is open to a maximum of 6 CAPHRI PhD candidates.

Registration
For more information and registration, please send an email to caphri-phdcourses@maastrichtuniversity.nl (remember to consult your supervisor about this before registering.) You will then receive a link to apply directly via the OMI platform. Registration is open until 1 November 2021. 

Fee
€300, including dinners and hotel accommodation. For your travel expenses, there will be a reimbursement up to €200 (after submission of original receipts).