The idea for this volume developed when we were co-teaching our
introductory, mas- ter's-level course in the Department of Health
Behavior at the UAB School of Public Health, a core course for all
masters of public health students in the school regardless of the
department in which they enrolled or the focus of their studies. Hence,
in the course we sought to provide both students in our department, as
well as those who might not ever again take a health behavior course,
with an overview that would both truly represent the field and
substantially provide educational, research, and public health practice
benefits. This was, and continues to be, a challenge with the diversity
of students specializing in fields that include not only health behavior
but also bio- statistics, environmental health sciences, epidemiology,
health care organization and policy, international health, and maternal
and child health. The course that we taught attempted to provide the
students with an overview of some of the important health promotion and
disease prevention theories, methods, and policy issues, while re-
viewing applications of these theories and methods to promoting health
and pre- venting disease through a variety of channels, for a variety of
disease outcomes, and among a variety of populations. Since no one text
provided this variety of readings, we depended on readings and guest
lectures.