"Mapping the Determinants of Health and Behavior: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Dietary Behavior" - a presentation by Robert Hornik November 8, 2007

Robert Hornik is Wilbur Schramm Professor of Communication at the Annenburg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. The health and well-being of people - and the societies to which they belong - rest on a complex set of relations that connect biological, psychological, social, cultural, and environmental systems, but to date efforts to promote health and alleviate disease have focused primarily on the operations of a single system or level of analysis. There is emerging consensus among both researchers and practitioners that future innovations in efforts to improve dietary behavior critically depend on the development of new models that capture the interdependencies among the biological, psychological, and environmental systems that regulate people's health and health practices. The formation of a multidisciplinary research collaborative is a critical first step toward the design of innovative multi-level models that will facilitate the development of an evidence base that can guide new approaches to improving people's dietary practices and, in turn, improve their health.

Sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study and the School of Journalism & Mass Communication. Organized by the Mapping the Determinants of Health and Behavior research collaborative.

Official Website: http://www.ias.umn.edu