Behavioral Health and Wellness (B.S.)

A second-year medical resident can treat 80 percent of people with a heart condition by giving simple guidance: eat better, get more exercise and sleep, and stop smoking. Easy, right? The problem is knowing what to do is much easier than knowing how to do it. Lifestyle habits are engrained from years of subtle abuse to our bodies. In that way, these aren’t issues for medicine; they’re issues for psychology.

As a student in the Bachelor of Science in Behavioral Health and Wellness program in the Lewis College of Human Sciences, you will develop your understanding of how lifestyle choices impact health over time, and how to design individualized programs to promote healthy living, most often related to nutrition, exercise, and tobacco and alcohol use. You’ll also become a patient advocate, educating patients on how to steer through the daunting bureaucracy of health care services.

Program Overview

We're interested in how lifestyle choices affect health and wellness. Our students learn to create individualized programs to promote healthy living, most often related to nutrition, exercise, and tobacco and alcohol use. They also learn to be great patient advocates.

Career Opportunities

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that jobs in health education and health promotion will grow by 11 percent over the next decade alone. After graduation, you can enter a wide range of health/wellness professions, including:

• Patient education
• Behavioral health coaching
• Assisting psychologists and other health professionals with direct patient care
• Policy analysis
• Advocacy

You will also be prepared to continue on to graduate school in a number of fields.

Program Specializations

• Health Psychology
• Nutrition
• Public Health