You are a health psychologist with a primary interest in helping people avoid negative health outcomes associated with cardiovascular diseases. Describe various primary and secondary prevention programs that could be started in your community to reduce the incidence of heart disease. Identify the population targeted by each program and an explanation why a given preventative program may be helpful. 

You are a health psychologist working at a medical school. A pharmaceutical company wants to test to see if a new drug they have developed reduces the symptoms of depression. What factors would you consider when deciding whether a given patient could participate in the drug trial?

Your roommate drinks caffeinated soft drinks all the time. After her morning classes, she takes a nap for several hours, and she often stays up all night trying to catch up on schoolwork. Today, she tells you that for the last week she has had trouble falling asleep. What can you tell her to help her understand how some of her behaviours might be affecting her sleep?

How would you design a study to test the impact of stress on test performance? How would you measure stress? How would you be able to tell whether a causal link between stress and performance existed?

Although research clearly suggests that psychological and biological variables affect one another, why do you think that a mind-body dualism perspective persists in medical research and health care?