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This chapter integrates major points and findings presented in Volume IV. Although its contents reflect primarily the contributions to this volume rather than the larger body of scholarship about the relevance of health behavior research, the contents are nonetheless congruent with such knowledge. The nature of this volume precludes using the same matrix organizing structure underlying the integrations in Volumes I through III. It proved unwieldy to coordinate categories of health behaviors with personal, social, and institutional systems as levels of analysis for these applications.

This chapter integrates major points and findings presented in Volume II. Although its contents primarily reflect the contributions to this volume, rather than the larger body of scholarship about how providers—health care professionals and institutions—affect health behavior, they are consistent with this knowledge. The section on future directions is the major exception to this principle, and includes additional perspectives. The chapter’s organizing framework is a “work in progress” and is intended to become the foundation for a future synthesis and integration of this larger body of knowledge.

Health behavior research is multidisciplinary. It is not exclusively the turf or domain of any single discipline or profession and is conducted by persons trained in a number of these disciplines. This chapter describes and discusses four major cognate disciplines that inspire and generate health behavior research: health psychology, medical anthropology, medical geography, and medical sociology. There is danger, of course, in designating these as “four major cognate disciplines”; it may well be argued that there are other “major” ones. Literature reviews, suggest, however, that the phrase, and its implied limitations, are appropriate.

This chapter provides an integration of major points and findings presented in Volume III. Although its contents primarily reflect the contributions to this volume, rather than the larger body of scholarship about how health behaviors are distributed across and within populations, they are consistent with such knowledge. The section on future directions is the major exception to this statement concerning content, including as it does some additional perspectives. The chapter’s organizing framework is a “work in progress” and is intended to become the foundation for a future synthesis and integration of this larger body of knowledge.

This study attempts to identify factors that contribute to the occurrence and severity of acutely hazardous chemical releases. The study uses EPA’s Acute Hazardous Events Data Base, which documents chemical releases by providing information on release conditions, the properties of the chemicals involved, and the consequences of the release (e. g., death, injury and evacuation). Measures of these consequences are used as an index of severity and serve as the dependent variables in a series of statistical models. Three hypotheses are tested: (1) severe events tend to occur at non-process times, suggesting that human error may play a significant role in serious accidents; (2) the quantity of the chemical released, standardized by toxicity, is positively related to the severity of an event; and (3) the probability of severe consequences is greatly enhanced when there are releases to air.