I N S P I R E
 Insight   Spirit  Innate Resilience
brought to you by Sedgeman Consulting, LLC
Judith A. Sedgeman, EdD
PUBH 580: Prevention Through Resilience
(online, Summer Semester)
Course Goals
The course is designed to explore and bring to life a principle-based model of professional health competency. The course addresses the source of resilience in people, and fosters the capacity of students to sustain their own well-being and ability to function productively, successfully and without stress among colleagues and constituents, regardless of circumstances. This course will prepare students to become lifetime learners in strengthening their own healthy, insightful and wise approach to life and work ("the health of the helper") in order to continue to develop their ability to serve others, and to respond appropriately to an ever-changing and consistently demanding community and public health environment. Students will have practice in how to elicit health and well-being in clients consistently and how to empower clients to access their own resiliency and improve the quality of their lives in the course of various prevention and education projects. Students will become familiar with current literature on resiliency, stress, and new findings on the relationship between chronic stress and many disease states relevant to education and prevention strategies in public health.

The course is updated every year to include the most recent information in psychoneuroimmunology and developments in Principles work. See the video below for the 2011 Course Introduction.
Student comment after five weeks in  PUBH 580:

Throughout my school career, I have had a few "stress reducing" learning sessions, so I was aware that stress can adversely affect the body's physical well-being... However, I never learned that mood affected a person's stress level. It was always, if you are stressed, it will most likely lead to a bad mood. After becoming familiar with the Principles, I think mood and stress are related the other way around. It is a person's mood that affects how they experience a situation and that experience will determine the stress a person feels from that situation. If a person learns to have a calm quiet mind, mood should be raised and stress will be decreased. Better understanding of the Principles helps a person find a quieter mind. A quieter mind is equal to a greater resiliency, which in turn allows life events to affect a person very little, if at all. This little effect on a person is stress resistance. To me, stress resistance would be the ultimate understanding of the Principles.

CHPR 580 - Intro to Public Health Concepts
(on-line, Spring Semester)
The Mental Health Unit of this course is entirely Principle-based. Since the course is focused on health educators, this unit focuses on why it is important for young people to grasp the inside-out nature of thought, and the fact of Innate Health and resiliency as a "default setting" for people. Students in this unit learn how to present the basic information about mental health and mental illnesses from the point of view of the Principles. The unit includes a section on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) definitions of the most common thought disorders and explains them from the perspective of the Principles.
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About WVU Principle-based Courses

I joined the faculty of the West Virginia University School of Medicine in 1998 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Medicine. In 2002, I offered my first graduate-level course, an elective in the Public Health Program. Over time, I developed and taught other courses based on the Principles. When I left WVU in 2009, I became an adjunct professor in the Public Health Program, Department of Community Medicine, of the West Virginia University School of Medicine. My elective courses are no longer taught, but my established graduate-level Principle-based course, PUBH 580, which is required in the Wellness Track, is still available on-line. It is cross-listed as an elective for other graduate disciplines as well.

To take the courses, students must be registered WVU graduate students. However, some course materials from previous years may be viewed on Judy Sedgeman's  supplementary course web-site.
Prevention Through Resilience, PUBH 580, is popular with school counselors, health professionals, and students in sports psychology and public administration, as well as Public Health students. To visit the course Wiki space, click here.
WVU "Pylons," showing the history of medicine, a major architectural feature of the WVU School of Medicine Learning Center.
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