During a period from May, 1993 to July of 1993, 309 employees of a large telecommunication's company selfselected to participate in an eight-week health promotion program designed to assist them in changing health behaviors. The program participants were then surveyed at the end of one-year to determine if they had maintained the health behavior changes practiced during the eight-week program and the impact of family, friends and coworkers on the level the participant was practicing the health behavior changes at the end of one-year.A growing body of evidence suggests ongoing research in the area of health behavior change because health related medical claims, absenteeism and decreased productivity continue to have serious financial consequences for American business. In Corporate America, health education programs have been organized to give employees the opportunity to change negative health habits and replace them with positive health habits. The assumption being, that healthier employees': (1) use less medical benefits (2) report fewer absent sick days and (3) are more productive employees.In addition, prior research indicates that being part of a social network or having access to social group support can help individuals decrease the level they practice negative health habits and increase the level they practice positive health habits. Thus, an understanding of social group support on the behavior change process is important to education professionals evaluating the effectiveness of health education programs within the corporate setting.This research study was designed to examine a health promotion program offered to employees of a large telecommunication company and the impact social groups andcontent had on the level participants changed their health related behaviors. The research assumed that examining encouragement and discouragement provided by: (1) family, (2) friends, and (3) coworkers would lead to a greater understanding of the impact social groups had on the level a participant practiced health behavior changes at the end of one year.This research indicated that social group participation played a significant role in the level a program participant was practicing health behavior changes at the end of one year. The analysis further indicated that support from family and friends were significant factors in the behavioral change process.In addition, organizational support prior to and during the "Health Habits Challenge" program had no significant impact on the level participants were practicing health behavior changes at the end of one year. However, participants receiving organizational support prior to and during the "Health Habits Challenge" program perceived their health as having improved during the one-year maintenance phase, while participants who did not receive organizational support reported their health status had declined.Relationships reported by this research study are sufficiently strong enough to warrant further research both qualitative and quantitative, to provide health educators with a better understanding of how social groups and organizational content influence health behavior changes. The factors are potentially important, not only for theoretical and research purposes but also for making practice and policy decisions appropriate to health promotion and health education. / Department of Educational Leadership

In the last few decades as American society and urban life have changed dramatically, public health and urban sociological research have increasingly focused on the effect of residential location on individual well-being. In recent years, social capital has been viewed as an important pathway in understanding the associations between where one lives and health and social outcomes. Although there is not one, single definition of social capital, researchers within public health have often relied on three schools of thought labeled after Pierre Bourdieu, James Coleman, and Robert Putnam to define social capital and hypothesize its relationship with health and behaviors. However, for many years, public health researchers have often relied on Putnam's theory (1993, 1995, 2000) and a communitarian approach to defining social capital and its possible relationship to health and well-being. Many researchers and sociologists have criticized this over-reliance and overuse of Putnam's social capital constructs as they have been criticized for lacking depth and their inability to explain the causal pathways in which social capital and health operate. Additionally, the measures used to operationalize the most widely used Putnam social capital constructs often focus only on a few dimensions of his theory; generalized trust, shared norms and values, reciprocity, and civic engagement. These measures have been criticized for simultaneously being overly theoretically broad and limited in its measurement. In this research, I use a more recent paradigm of social capital theory that conceptualizes social capital as having several dimensions thereby enabling one to examine the possibility that different forms of social capital and cohesion have different impacts (both negative and positive) on health behaviors and well-being. This paper compares a Putnam-based social capital model as measured by the most commonly used variables based on his work against a broader, multi-dimensional model that measures social capital across several constructs and variables. I have evaluated the "expanded" multi-dimensional model and the smaller, Putnam-only model with a different dataset to examine the relationships between these dimensions of social capital and health behaviors and outcomes. Additionally, recent sociological research using this expanded approach has highlighted the important role of individual attachment to the neighborhood as an important mediator in the association between social capital and health outcomes. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a longitudinal birth cohort study of families in 20 cities with populations of 200,000 or more people, I investigated the role of social capital as measured across four dimensions, social cohesion (the Putnam-based Traditional Model), individual neighborhood attachment, and neighborhood socio-economic conditions on the likelihood of maternal smoking and alcohol use. Moreover, this multi-dimensional model was enhanced by the addition of another feature of social capital that was not extensively addressed in prior research, bridging social capital. Bridging social capital has been defined as relationships among individuals who are not alike in social identity or characteristics. In recent years, bridging social capital at times has been further refined to highlight the relationships within heterogeneous networks who do not share the same power structures and institutions, and economic spheres. This has been referred to as "linking" social capital. Additionally, sociologist Mario Small has extensively documented that importance of both weak ties (an aspect of "bridging" social capital) and organizational embeddedness in the relationship between social capital and health and well- being for residents in poor communities. This underrepresented dimension in the public health literature is addressed in this paper. In this research, I incorporated a measure of bridging social capital and organizational ties to highlight the possible role this form of social capital may play in understanding the association of social capital and health outcomes. This research extends the current literature by applying a recently developed model of social capital to the analysis of health outcomes using a different data set. The goal of this study was not only to explore smoking and alcohol use, neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, indicators of social capital (including social support, social leverage, informal social control, neighborhood organization participation, and bridging social capital), and the role of individual neighborhood attachment but also highlight the importance for public health researchers to use a multidimensional approach rather than rely on utilizing a few social capital constructs retrieved from Putnam's extensive published work. The multi-dimensional approach which broadens the lens in which researchers use to aid them in the understanding the association between social capital and health and well-being is more beneficial than a narrow focus that relies on a few social capital domains to examine this relationship. The association of these different dimensions was statistically tested through multiple logistic regression analyses which examined a hypothesized interaction effect between organizational embeddedness and social capital and its association with health outcomes and behaviors. It is hoped that this research will further advance the public health discourse regarding the association between health outcomes and social capital, measured across several dimensions and conceptualized through an access to resources and networks based lens.

University attendance includes various activities and experiences that can have a unique impact on psychosocial development and adult health behaviors, and can influence life course outcomes such as short- and long-term health and quality of life. College attendance and health are cyclical and reinforcing factors. Healthier students do better while at college, which allows them to effectively progress through university. College graduation is closely associated with improved health status in later life. In addition, students' personal development as part of their transition to adulthood during college, which includes psychosocial and interpersonal growth, is associated with greater gains in health and personal success in later life. Identifying the factors associated with enhanced health status while in college would ensure that a greater number of the overall population has access to the potential health benefits of progressing through and graduating from an institution of higher education. Because health behaviors can have a significant impact on how well a student progresses through college, as well as future quality of life, colleges and universities should recognize the role health is playing in the student experience. This study explored the connection of how factors such as student sub-group participation, health behaviors, and particular negative experiences affect the health status of college students attending a large, urban, top-tier university. It investigated which students were at an increased risk for negative mental health symptoms and overall lower general health and how students' participation in various groups (student athletes, students who are members of sororities and fraternities, and students who volunteer) is associated with health behavior (alcohol and other drug use, sexual behavior, and sleep), negative experiences (bias/discrimination and interpersonal violence), and health outcomes. In addition, the study analyzed how personal development at college mediates those relationships. This study is based on non-experimental cross-sectional survey data from the National College Health Assessment that was collected in collaboration with the American College Health Association at Columbia University (CU). All enrolled undergraduate students at CU in Columbia College or the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the spring semester of 2009 (n=5708) were invited to participate in the survey, and 31.8% of the sample responded. This research used the Baron and Kenny model to examine the mediation effects of personal development on general health and mental health via a series of bivariate and regression analyses. While the overall general and mental health of respondents was good, particular groups were less likely to report overall excellent or very good general health and more likely to report mental health symptoms. Negative experiences and health behaviors varied significantly between student sub-groups. Health behaviors and negative experiences were predictive of overall general health and mental health symptoms. Sleep, drug use, and experiences of bias/discrimination and interpersonal violence (IPV) were most predictive of health. Personal development was found to partially mediate the relationship between IPV, sleep and overall general health. In addition, personal development was found to partially mediate the relationship between IPV, drug use other than or in addition to marijuana, and sleep and mental health symptoms. The findings from this study suggest that college and university administrators should consider directing resources into targeting particular groups of students for focused health promotion interventions related to specific topics as a method for improving overall general health and reducing mental health symptoms of students. College and university administrators are encouraged to consider the role of personal development as a unique factor in improving student health.