Health Psychology Institute
Program Details:
June 19 - 21, 2013
PSY 390
The Health Psychology Institute will be held at the Joel and Linda Abromson Community Education Center on USM's Portland Campus. Presentations are held in the 500 seat, climate-controlled Hannaford Lecture Hall. The institutes are led by USM Psychology Professor William Gayton, Ph.D. During the past 20 years, Professor Gayton has been instrumental in the creation, promotion, and execution of these intense and fascinating educational programs.
The institutes consist of three-day intensive classes (Wednesday-Friday) for college students seeking academic credit or for community professionals seeking certification and professional development opportunities. The institutes offer CEU's for teachers requiring recertification, as well as for participants seeking Board of Psychology or Social Work CEU's.
The educational focus of these unique programs is to bring together a tremendous team of academic experts to facilitate a discussion of theory and practice. The institutes are intended to appeal to mental health practitioners, health care professionals, physicians, physical therapists, nursing students, psychologists, counselors, social workers, human service workers, coaches, athletic directors, and athletes.
Open to all majors, no prerequisites.
Schedule:
Wednesday, June 19
- Registration and Check-in: 8:00-9:00am
- Introduction and Welcome: 9:15-9:30am
William Gayton, Ph.D., University of Southern Maine
Timothy J. Thornton, USM Summer
- Morning Session: 9:30am-12:00pm
- Outdoor Therapeutic Recreation for Combat Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Elizabeth Vella, Ph.D., University of Southern Maine
Jessie Lynn Bennett, MS, CTRS
- Lunch, Woodbury Campus Center:12:00pm-1:00pm
- Afternoon Sessions: 1:00pm-3:30pm
- Alcohol Use, Abuse and –Ism: The Role of Health Psychology in Identifying & Treating Substance Use/Misuse
Deborah Taylor, Ph.D., Central Maine Medical Center
Thursday, June 20
- Morning Session- 9:30am-12:00pm
- A Family’s Illness: Appreciating Disease from a Systems Perspective
Deborah Taylor, Ph.D., Central Maine Medical Center - Humor – Just for the Health of It
Deborah Taylor, Ph.D., Central Maine Medical Center
- Lunch, Woodbury Campus Center: 12:00pm-1:00pm
- Afternoon Session: 1:00pm-3:30pm
- Well-Being & Living Well; The Science & Art of Human Flourishing & Optimal Health
Jay Kimiecik, Ph.D., Miami University, Ohio
Friday, June 21
- Morning Session: 9:30am-12:00pm
- Mobilizing The Village: Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and Child Health Disparities
Farrah Jacquez, Ph.D., University of Cincinnati
- Lunch, Woodbury Campus Center: 12:00pm-1:00pm
- Afternoon Session: 1:00pm-3:30pm
- Making People Healthier By Helping Them Follow Through On Their Own Good Intentions: A Golden Opportunity for Psychology
Steve Levinson, Ph.D., Behavioral Dynamics, Inc.
- Closing Comments: 3:30pm-4:00pm
William F. Gayton, Ph.D., University of Southern Maine
Faculty
Deborah Taylor, Ph.D., received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a subspecialty in health psychology from the University of Kansas in 1985, and subsequently completed a postdoctoral internship at Ohio State University Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship in chronic and cancer pain, she returned to Ohio State University Hospital to direct a psychology consultation service for hospitalized medical patients. A native Mainer and a graduate of the University of Southern Maine, Taylor was very pleased to return to her home state in 1992 to join the faculty of the Central Maine Medical Center Family Practice Residency Program where she serves as the director of Behavioral medicine to primary care physician trainees, and continues to pursue her special interest in providing clinical care to patients with medical illness and/or chronic pain conditions. Taylor’s research interests focus on the psychological impact of illness, pain, and disability on the patient and their family/support system.
Steve Levinson, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author and inventor who has devoted much of his career to understanding why people so often fail to follow through on their own good intentions.
Levinson, with co-author Pete Greider, wrote Following Through, a book that examines "the great disconnect" between good intentions and behavior. First published in 1998, Following Through set forth a provocative theory and bold solutions that continue to attract international attention, praise and extensive media exposure including appearances by Levinson on ABC TV 20/20 and BBC radio.
Levinson is also the inventor of the MotivAider®, a simple personal electronic device that enables people of all ages to make desired changes in their own behavior and habits. The device is used at the Mayo Clinic and in the healthcare, education, business and sports industries in 49 countries.
Levinson earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Queens College of the City University of New York and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Rochester (1973). He served as director of an innovative rural mental health program in Minnesota for over thirty five years.
Levinson is currently president of Behavioral Dynamics, Inc., the Minnesota company he co-founded in 1987 to develop, manufacture, and market the MotivAider® and support its users worldwide
Elizabeth Vella, Ph.D., received her Ph.D. in Psychological Science form Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2005 and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh in 2007. She is currently and Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern Maine. Her research interests include the psychophysiology of emotion and personality, with an emphasis on measures of autonomic nervous system activity in relation to health and disease; psychosocial factors and cardiovascular risk, and physiological mechanisms that may explain these associations; and the influences of trait hostility and anger management style on cardiovascular reactivity/poor recovery to stress in the etiology of cardiovascular disease. Her research has appeared in some of the top journals in health psychology including the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Health Psychology and the International Journal of Psychophysiology. Dr. Vella is currently in the process of establishing her research programs in health psychology here at USM to study biopsychosocial models in stress and coping. Her current projects include serotonergic enhancement in hostile adults to reduce resting blood pressure and heart rate levels; the interrelationships between trait measures of hostility and daily reports of hostile moods and social strain; stress reduction in breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy; and the utility of emotion disposition measures in predicting cardiovascular responses to mood induction.
Jessie Bennett, CTRS, is currently an Associate Instructor at Indiana University. She received her master’s degree from Brigham Young University in Youth and Family Recreation in 2010 and is ABD at Indiana University. She has worked as a recreational therapist with a variety of populations including veterans with combat-related disabilities in outdoor recreational therapy programs. As a practitioner, she has developed and successfully implemented recreation programs for veterans and children with developmental disabilities. In addition, her research is focused on therapeutic outdoor veteran recreation programs that primarily examine the outcomes related to participation for veterans with combat-related disabilities and their families. She has conducted several research presentations and published articles relating to the topic of veteran recreation programs. Also, she has been invited to guest lecture on topics and issues related to veterans and recreation involvement across the country.
Farrah Jacquez, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Jacquez received her PhD in clinical child psychology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. She did her predoctoral internship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric psychology at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. Broadly, Dr. Jacquez is interested in partnering with members of minority communities to increase health equity. Her current research focuses on utilizing community-based participatory research methods to address child health disparities. Recently, she has developed partnerships with both Latino and Appalachian communities to develop culturally and contextually appropriate childhood obesity interventions.
Jay Kimiecik, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health at Miami University (Oxford, OH). His early career work focused on the integration of behavior change theory with optimal experiences (e.g., flow) to enhance understanding of physical activity across the lifespan. He also developed and tested the Family Influence Model, which extended the study of children’s physical activity from descriptive to more conceptual- and theory-based. Because of this groundbreaking work, Jay was awarded the prestigious Research Writing Award by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. Jay’s theory-based work evolved to practical application best exemplified by the YPersonal Fitness Program: 12 Weeks to a Better You, which he co-developed and authored for the YMCA of the USA. YPersonal Fitness, a behavior change program for beginning exercisers that utilized an innovative personal coach model, has been used in hundreds of YMCAs over the past 15 years. Jay is also the author of two books: The Intrinsic Exerciser: Discovering the Joy of Exercise and Runner as Hero: The Inner Quest of Becoming a Runner or Athlete or Just About Anything…At Any Age. Jay also founded Miami University’s Employee Health & Well-Being Program and was its director for five years (2005-2010). He also served as the Associate Director of Miami University’s Partnership Office for two years. His latest application work, funded by a grant from the WellPoint Foundation, focused on helping adolescents explore the connection between well-being and healthy living using an innovative college student mentoring model. His present scholarly interests are researching and writing—both academically and practically—about eudaimonic well-being and its role in healthy living. He received his BS from SUNY Cortland, an MS from Purdue University, and his PhD in exercise and sport psychology from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He lives and plays in Oxford, OH with his wife, Kim, and their two teenage children.
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