Biological and Health Program

Chair: Thomas W. Kamarck, PhD

Application Deadline: December 1

Graduate students who are admitted into the Biological and Health Psychology Program will have the opportunity to engage in research in any of three general areas of concentration: psychoneuroimmunology (including cancer), cardiovascular behavioral medicine, and addictions and psychopharmacology.

The program strongly emphasizes research training and students are expected to develop skills needed to serve as independent investigators in health psychology. The curriculum places emphasis on:

• The central importance of psychological and behavioral constructs and the reciprocal causal relationships among these constructs and physiological mechanisms, and
• Cross-fertilization between animal and human research approaches to the same sets of theoretical and empirical questions.

The program allows for intensive study in basic or clinical research and has a joint Clinical/Health Psychology track for students who want to obtain clinical psychology training. Research opportunities are the same in both tracks, and most faculty in the program share broad interests as well as more focused research and clinical activities.

Students practice using physiological monitoring equipment to examine the body's responses to psychological stressors.