Article archive / April 1, 2011
Originally published: . Volume 2, No. 8. Source pages: 6, 7, 8.
Introduction
A career in public health is a natural choice, if not an immediately obvious one, for psychologists and psychology majors. When we think of public health, the disciplines of epidemiology and health policy and systems management may come to mind. However, public health also includes biostatistics, environmental health sciences, and behavioral and community health sciences.
Over the past two decades, each of these disciplines has contributed to improving the public’s health. There have been significant decreases in infant mortality, deaths from heart disease and stroke, an overall leveling off of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug use, and significant advances made in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
But challenges to the public’s health continue: obesity in children and adults is pandemic, as are diabetes and other chronic illnesses; oil spills and waste disposal threaten our environment; tobacco use remains the single most preventable cause of death and disease; and HIV/AIDS presents a serious threat, disproportionately affecting women and communities of color.
Psychology and public health complement each other in more ways than you can imagine. The complementary touchstone is behavior. Individual behavior and environmental factors are responsible for about 70% of premature deaths in the US. Psychology, the study of behavior, affords its graduates a program of study grounded in the scientific method, enriched by an understanding of the biologic bases of behavior, enhanced by developmental, social, organizational, community, and educational psychology, and woven together by statistics, research methods, and program evaluation.
In this on-going series, we will present examples of the natural fit between psychology and public health by highlighting the paths of psychologists whose professional careers have segued into public health. All are faculty of the Behavioral and Community Health Sciences Program (BCHS) of the LSU Health Sciences Center School of Public Health in New Orleans.
Dr. Sarah Moody-Thomas
The career of Dr. Sarah Moody-Thomas is a guide to a clinical psychologist’s transition into the field of public health. Dr. Moody-Thomas is the director of the BCHS program, the Charles L. Brown, Jr. MD Professor of Health Promotion, and Director of the LSU Health Care Services Division’s Tobacco Control Initiative (TCI). She earned her BS in psychology at Southern University in Baton Rouge and her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Georgia, where she co-majored in public administration.
Although primarily academic, Sarah’s career has included clinical practice, community development, and organizational behavior change in addition to research and program evaluation. She has been a member of the psychology faculties of Louisiana State University and University of New Orleans (UNO), ultimately becoming chair of the psychology department at UNO. While at UNO she maintained a small clinical practice, consulting specifically on behavior management of clients with both developmental delay and mental illness, initiating changes in environmental and structural processes for this population.
Sarah’s research interests have always focused on addressing the needs of minority and medically underserved populations by examining organizational structures that contribute to health disparities. While at UNO, she tackled her first major public health issue, preventing and controlling the use of tobacco products. She conducted school-based interventions to prevent tobacco use and research to identify individual characteristics and environmental factors affecting student’s decisions to smoke.
Her earlier work brought her into contact with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and its efforts to prevent and control cancer in high-risk groups. She became the regional president for the NCI-sponsored National Black Leadership Initiative on Cancer.
“The goal,” she said, “was to engage communities and get the word out on prevalence, screening, and early detection of cancer and the importance of involvement in clinical research.”
Her efforts brought her to the attention of the LSUHSC, where she was appointed Associate Director of Behavioral Science and Community Education at the Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center and professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Public Health and Preventive Medicine.
“I’ve had the pleasure of initiating several cancer control and prevention projects, including Partners in Wellness,” she said, “where we trained indigenous lay health educators from specific zip codes in New Orleans to share messages about screening and early detection of cancer and help community members navigate the health care delivery system to access care.”
“I am a founding member,” she explained, “of the New Orleans Chapter of Komen for the Cure, at one time known as the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and served in leadership capacities to ensure representative participation in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial and Selenium versus Vitamin E trials conducted by of the South West Oncology Group, a national cooperative group for clinical trials.”
Her NCI-funded projects have focused on increasing minority participation in cancer clinical research, the role of physician education in minority enrollment in clinical trials, and community education and dissemination of health promoting information. Her expertise in these areas has been recognized by her appointment to two committees of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine: Preventing Nicotine Addiction in Children and Youths, and Cancer Research Among Minorities and the Medically Underserved.
“There is a wealth of research supporting the benefits of tobacco cessation and the effectiveness of evidence-based treatments,” Sarah noted. In 2003, the same year that the LSUHSC School of Public Health was established, and acting in her role as Director of the TCI (Tobacco Control Initiative), Sarah accepted the legislative mandate to provide tobacco cessation services to patients of the state’s public hospital system.
“For me, the challenge was to integrate this knowledge into the existing health care delivery system in a way that made access to treatment sustainable and available to all patients in that health care network. I saw this as an ideal opportunity to translate research into practice using the system change strategies recommended in the US Public Health Service [2000] clinical practice guideline, Treating tobacco use and dependence,” she said.
To reach this goal, Sarah marshaled the resources of both psychology and public health. She started by assessing the knowledge, attitudes, practices, and preferences of patients and clinicians, learned about institutional resources and infrastructure to identify, treat, and monitor tobacco users, and employed a systems approach to the development, implementation, and evaluation of the TCI.
“I used an ecological perspective to help me identify the levels of influence that might come into play and stage theories of change, such as the Transtheoretical Model and Organizational Development, to understand and guide individual and organizational change.”
The TCI emerged as a multi-level intervention to prompt clinicians to engage patients about their use of tobacco, rate readiness for change, and refer for treatment. These practices are supported and facilitated by information technology and the system’s electronic health record.
Fully implemented in seven of LSU’s public hospital facilities, the TCI is a recognized success. Its patient “quit rates” doubled between 2007 and 2009.
As a result, in 2010 the National Association of Public Hospitals recognized the TCI as an outstanding program for the use of health information technology in the identification and treatment of tobacco use. “This program [TCI] puts our state at the forefront of innovation to improve the public’s health,” said Dr. Sarah Moody- Thomas.
The BCHS program ascribes to a socioecological perspective to understand determinants of health. As such, Dr. Moody-Thomas and her faculty actively recruit psychology majors from area universities to pursue a master’s degree in public health.
She says, “Public health is a natural for someone with a background in psychology.” Dr. Sarah Moody-Thomas’ career path can attest to that.
For more information about the LSUHSC School of Public Health and the BCHS program and admission for fall 2011, visit http://publichealth.lsuhsc.edu/
Dr. Sarah Moody-Thomas, director of the Behavioral and Community Health Sciences Program (BCHS) of the LSU Health Sciences Center School of Public Health in New Orleans. Her Tobacco Control Initiative has received national notice. (Photo courtesy LSUHSC School of Public Health)
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