On Monday, November 27th, Pennsylvania State University’s Joshua Smyth will speak on ambulatory assessment and intervention in daily life at the Colorado State University Behavioral Sciences Building.

The Department of Human Development and Family Studies will be hosting this event in BSB room 457, from 3 to 4 pm. 

Smyth is a distinguished professor of Biobehavioral health and medicine at Penn State and Hershley Medical Center. He is head of the Dynamic Real-time Ecological Ambulatory Methodologies. Smyth also works as the associate director of Penn States Social Science Research Institute (SSRI).

He is the co-author of “Opening Up by Writing It Down–How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain,” in which he discusses stress and the effects of stress on the psyche. 

His focuses include human development, domains of health and behavior, contexts and social institutions and populations of special interest.

Smyth’s three main areas of interest are the effects of experiencing stress on the human psyche and on the biopsychosocial processes, as well as the affects of psychosocial intervention on health. 

Smyth received his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University, in Stony Brook, New York in 1998.

Smyth’s presentation will tackle ambulatory assessment and intervention when treating the ‘free-range’ human. His discussion will include a description of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), emerging ambulatory technologies and the merging of the two. 

Smyth will also be covering patient-specified variables (such as behaviors and physiology) and how these variables can be used to make treatment assessments. 

With his background in domains of health and behavior, Smyth will unpack rationale, implementation and contributions of real-time emergency health assessment.

Collegian reporter Audrey Weiss can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @audkward.