Restaurant Health and Hygiene: A Model Program with Theory-Based Guidelines for Implementation

Poor hygienic practices and illness of restaurant employees are major contributors to the contamination of food and the occurrence of food-borne illness in the United States, costing the food industry and society billions of dollars each year. Risk factors associated with this problem include lack of proper handwashing; food handlers reporting to work sick; poor personal hygiene; and bare hand contact with ready-to-eat foods. However, traditional efforts to control these causes of food-borne illness by public health authorities have had limited impact, and have revealed the need for comprehensive and innovative programs that provide active managerial control over employee health and hygiene in restaurant establishments. Further, the introduction and eventual adoption by the food industry of such programs can be facilitated through the use of behavior-change theory. This Capstone Project develops a model program to assist restaurant owners and operators in exerting active control over health and hygiene in their establishments and provides theory-based recommendations for the introduction of the program to the food industry.

Crossing Blurred Lines: A Training Program to Train Teachers in Appropriate Sexual Boundaries

Boundaries between students and teachers were once clearly defined. Students only interacted with their teachers at school. Currently, however, boundaries are becoming increasingly unclear. As technology advances, students have more venues to interact with their teachers. In addition, teachers are asked to take on more roles in their students' lives. A significant number of teachers and students engage in inappropriate relationships and the possible damage to students is high. Unfortunately, current training programs do not adequately address how teachers can maintain appropriate boundaries with their charges. This paper outlines a proposal for a new training program to fill this gap. This program utilizes training techniques that have been shown to be useful for adult learners as it helps teachers establish and maintain boundaries as well as incorporating elements of effective prevention programs.

Exploring How AFFECT (A Family Focused Emotion Communication Training) and Self Psychology Are Mutually Enhancing

This paper implicitly advocates for a rapprochement between psychodynamic and behavioral approaches to psychotherapy, by exploring the similarities and differences between self psychology and A Family Focused Emotion Communication Training (AFFECT), a behavioral parent training model. Self psychology, a theory with broad applicability, has been applied to several modalities besides behavioral ones. Generally speaking, self psychology and AFFECT are both relational approaches to psychotherapy that emphasize the impact of parent responsiveness, more specifically empathic attunement, on a child's emotional development and emotion regulation. Differentiating aspects of each model are identified to enhance the other model. AFFECT has relevance for pushing self psychology theory more in the direction of operations, which has implications for enhancing the research potential of self psychology, as well as for the training of the self-psychologist. Conversely, self psychology has relevance for coaching the parent with low self-esteem and decreased self-efficacy in AFFECT, which has potential implications for AFFECT treatment outcomes.