Tomorrow's leaders in health promotion are being educated at American University today.

 

My Masters Thesis in Information Systems

I"m no Vannevar Bush, but I have learned enough to be convinced that computers will be considered as essential tools for doing business in the healthcare industry in the 21st century. In most organizations they will become part of the backbone of program and service development, management and delivery. The diffusion of computers in the health promotion sector has been slow when compared to other sectors of the economy.

The purpose of this thesis project is to gather data related to the questions about the degreee to which the leaders of the health promotion industry are prepared for full participantion in the information age, where increasingly more programming, service delivery and business processes will be done electronically. The second goal of this project is to establish a benchmark for how extensively health promotion professionals are currently using computers in the delivery of programs and services with their clients, patients, or serivce populations. Finally, I will attempt to make some comparisons with other sectors of the economy.

Part of the outcomes of this study will a statement about how we can make the transition to the digital age most effectively, and how we can balance the awesome power of touch and one-to-one human interaction with the capabilities, power, and fexibility of the emerging technologies. I would love to hear your thoughts about this area. You can respond by e-mail to me. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Michael O'Donnell for his advice and support during this project. My committee chair, Dr. Richard Gibson, and a great many others including Dr. Robert Karch, Dr. Stacey Snellling, Dr. Fred Jacobs, and Dr. Marc Schaeffer provided a great deal of assistance and guidance during the development of this project. My thesis defense (as a pdf file) took place on March 19, 2001.

Title: An Assessment of the Computing Habits of Health Promtion Professonals and Abstract for my study.

Front Matter - Title Page, Table of Contents, Acknowledgemnts, List of Tables and as a PDF file.

Chapter 1- The Problem and It's Context

Chapter 2 - The Literature Review

Chapter 3 - The Methodology

Chapter 4 - The Results

Chapter 5 - The Conclusions

Chapter 1 - 5 as a PDF file.

Appendices and as a pdf file

Selected Bibliography and as a PDF file.

My Committee:
Dr. Rick Gibson Cair - Computer Science and Information Systems
Dr. Gene McGuire - Computer Science and Information Systems
Dr. Stacey Snelling - Department of Health and Fitness

 

My papers and classwork in Information Systems
Last Updated: December 10, 2001