Hello again! So, what I wanted to do in this video is briefly review the course learning outcomes and talk about what "evidence-based" means in our field and why it's important. So, I'll quickly go through the course learning outcomes and then I'll talk about what "evidence-based" means. I want you to be able to do four things, meaning I want you to obtain the knowledge skills and abilities in this list. I want you to gain knowledge of evidence-based health and well-being theories and practices and be able to critically examine information about them, meaning you don't just memorize, meaning you're able to look at a source of information and say: "Okay is that false is that true." or ask "Is that credible?" and so on and so forth. Then, using that information, I want you to be able to identify pathways for optimal health and well-being! In other words I want you to be able to examine your own choices and say: "Am I benefiting from this choice or does this contribute to my risk for morbidity and mortality. I'll talk about what morbidity and mortality are in following lectures. Then, I want you to be able to apply the principles after you analyze your personal choices, and I want you to be able to engage in or change some of your behaviors in order to promote lifelong optimal personal health and well-being and improve your own quality of life. Finally, I want you to be able to relate these concepts and theories to socially responsible and culturally sensitive practices to promote health and well-being. So, let's go back up to the top. What does "evidence-based" mean? Evidence based practice originated in the field of medicine in the early 90s and it was largely conceived because the medical field realized that less than half of all medical decisions being made were actually supported by research evidence. So they realized that very critical, potentially life-altering clinical decisions were being made based on outdated medical textbooks or information obtained while physicians were in medical school possibly decades prior. Some of these practices or preferences may have been handed down from mentors or senior physicians. So what they did in medicine is they formulated a systematic process by which physicians can incorporate quote "best evidence" meaning cutting-edge research to AUGMENT their own professional knowledge and experience. So it didn't discount physicians or practitioners professional knowledge & experience but what it did is it started combining knowledge and professional experience with good research. So what this means is that you go through a process as a physician or as a practitioner in our field. I'm an exercise physiologist so if we were prescribing exercise whether it's to a healthy individual or whether it's somebody with a specific disease or condition, we look at the research first. We obviously have professional experience but we look at research to say is there any research suggesting what would be best practice? Are there specific physicians recommendations for this? Then we say, "Okay I've worked with people like this before." (if I have) and "based on that, what do I think is best practice" and so we combine all that to create an effective exercise program for that individual. That may include resistance training, it may include aerobic exercise and it may include rehabilitative exercises, but it's based on the best evidence available and it's also grounded in our professional knowledge and experience. So, evidence-based practice is a combination of practical experience and research. Now, what's "good research"? When we look for research, what we look for is quote "peer-reviewed information". Now does this mean that we watch Dr. Oz and do everything that Dr. Oz says? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Hopefully, if you watch Dr. Oz you know that most of what he says on the show and most of what infomercials and other sources of information that the public sees are largely incorrect or they're based on very poor research. When I say "peer-reviewed research" what I mean is research that's published in peer-reviewed journals. What that means is (and I'll give you an example in order to clarify): If I'm going to publish an article in a journal (and when I say a journal I mean a respected peer-reviewed journal) what I do is I submit an article to that journal. For example, we have the Journal of Applied Physiology or the ACSM has a journal actually called Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. So, what we do is we submit an article to that journal,and the journal has a few "editors-in-chief" and what those individuals do is they actually farm out or send the article to three reviewers. Most of the review processes are "blind" meaning you don't know who is reviewing your article and they don't know who the authors are. But the editors send the article to other experts in the field (meaning in MDs or PhDs in the field of physiology or biomechanics) depending on what journal you're publishing in, and those experts review the article. They review they "pick through it" very carefully. They review the quality of the study, they review whether it is acceptable for the journal, and based on that they either accept or reject the article. If they accept (and The Journal of Applied Physiology is a very difficult journal to get published in) the article then they make recommendations about for the changes they want to see made and after those changes are made it's eventually published. Here's an example of a article that I helped work on when I was a PhD student at Georgia State. I promise you don't have to read this for this class (ha ha), but it's about a specific protein in muscle that when damaged contributes to early strength deficits and what we call excitation contraction coupling failure after a specific type of muscle contraction. So we actually did this, I worked in a rodent lab at Georgia State so if you want to be really bored and be put to sleep, read this article before bed tonight and I guarantee you'll be out after the first couple of sentences. But that's just an example. So, we rely very heavily on peer-reviewed research as our "evidence" this is important because then as a result of... So, let's say we read a hundred articles or 100 articles on a specific subject and after that we're able to make specific recommendations. This is where the American College of Sports Medicine's "position stands" come from. So, this is actually posted on iLearn. What they have is a position stand that details or explains the quantity and quality of exercise that adults need for developing and maintaining many types of fitness over a life span. It gives you specific guidelines for prescribing exercise, but if you look at the end of the article just like this article... and I'll drag down to the end of it. What you see are "references". Now this article has 60 references, which may seem like a lot. So these are all other peer-reviewed articles from pee-reviewed journals. As you can see the "position stands" have hundreds upon hundreds of references and I'll drag down here to the bottom so you can see that they run from one down to 407 quality peer-reviewed research articles have been reviewed read and used to determine what would be "best practice" in prescribing exercise. So, this is an excellent example of evidence-based practice. All the information I'm going to communicate to you in this course is based on solid information that's either directly from a multitude of peer-reviewed research articles such as this one or it's based on the recommendation of a professional organization like the American College of Sports Medicine, or the American Physiological Society. So that's what I'm trying to communicate and hopefully I've made my point: The information I'm giving you has nothing to do with my quote "opinion". It's not opinion based. All I'm doing is communicating what the data suggests is the best practice in the field not only of exercise prescription but in health and well-being and largely what we talk about is health and well-being from a psychological physiological perspective, meaning mind and body. There's lots of research out there on both aspects and all these aspects of wellness that you'll review in Chapter 1. So again, point being this is evidence-based practice not Dr. Luke's opinion. It is what science suggests is best practice. So, hopefully this helps clarify a little bit about the the way the course is going to work and my approach to things. I'm really excited to start this semester so after you leave this video take the syllabus quiz and hopefully you enjoy the information and the format of the course.