Total Wellness

Course Description

HLP1081C – Total Wellness is a 2-credit course examining personal health across multiple dimensions and combining classroom instruction with physical activity. Broward College lists it at 2 credits and 48 total contact hours — 32 lecture and 16 laboratory — and the lab component is what distinguishes it from a purely academic health course.

The course is built on a multidimensional model of wellness, typically covering seven dimensions: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social, environmental, and financial. The premise is that health is not merely the absence of disease and that these dimensions interact — financial stress affects sleep, social isolation affects cardiovascular risk, physical activity affects mood.

Content covers cardiovascular health and disease risk, nutrition including dietary guidelines and evaluating nutritional claims, exercise prescription and the components of fitness, body composition, stress management, sleep, substance use, sexual health, disease prevention and screening, financial wellness, and environmental responsibility.

The laboratory component typically involves fitness assessment — cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and body composition — followed by developing and following a personal exercise prescription. Many versions require students to keep activity and dietary logs and to complete a behavior change project on a habit of their own choosing.

Offered at approximately 16 Florida institutions. At Broward it also fulfills an International/Intercultural competency requirement, which is worth checking locally since general education designations vary.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the dimensions of wellness and explain how they interact.
• Assess personal wellness across the dimensions using appropriate instruments.
• Describe cardiovascular disease risk factors and the behaviors that modify them.
• Apply current dietary guidelines and evaluate a personal diet against them.
• Critically evaluate nutritional and health claims, including supplement marketing.
• Describe the components of physical fitness and how each is developed.
• Complete fitness assessments and interpret the results.
• Develop a personal exercise prescription using the FITT framework.
• Describe body composition assessment and interpret results appropriately.
• Identify sources of stress and apply evidence-based stress management techniques.
• Describe the role of sleep in health and identify practices supporting it.
• Describe the health effects of tobacco, alcohol, and other substance use.
• Describe preventive health screening appropriate to age and risk.
• Describe financial wellness and its relationship to overall health.
• Design and carry out a personal behavior change plan and evaluate the outcome.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe mental health conditions, help-seeking, and available campus resources.
• Describe environmental health and personal environmental responsibility.
• Describe sexual health and reproductive decision-making.
• Describe complementary and alternative health approaches and the evidence for them.
• Describe health disparities and access to care.
• Describe consumer health and navigating the health care system.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Dimensions of wellness — physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social, environmental, and financial.
• Wellness assessment — self-assessment instruments and interpreting results.
• Behavior change — models of change, goal setting, and relapse.
• Cardiovascular health — risk factors, modifiable and non-modifiable.
• Nutrition — macronutrients, micronutrients, dietary guidelines, and label reading.
• Evaluating health claims — distinguishing evidence from marketing.
• Physical fitness components — cardiorespiratory endurance, strength, endurance, flexibility, and body composition.
• Fitness assessment — laboratory testing and interpretation.
• Exercise prescription — the FITT framework, progression, and safety.
• Stress — physiology, sources, and evidence-based management.
• Sleep — function, requirements, and sleep hygiene.
• Substance use — tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs; health effects and risk.
• Disease prevention — screening, immunization, and infectious disease.
• Financial wellness — budgeting, debt, and the health effects of financial stress.
• Environmental wellness — personal environmental health and responsibility.

Optional Topics

• Mental health and help-seeking.
• Sexual and reproductive health.
• Complementary and alternative approaches.
• Health disparities and access.
• Consumer health and navigating care.
• Aging and lifelong wellness.

Resources & Tools

• Connect Core Concepts in Health (Insel & Roth), McGraw Hill — among the most widely adopted texts.
• Fit & Well (Fahey, Insel & Roth), McGraw Hill — common where the fitness component is emphasized.
• Understanding Your Health (Payne, Hahn & Lucas).
• Dietary Guidelines for Americans and MyPlate — the federal nutrition standards, freely available.
• Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans — HHS; the evidence base for exercise prescription.
• American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) — exercise testing and prescription guidelines.
• CDC — preventive screening recommendations and health data.
• Fitness assessment equipment, activity trackers, and dietary analysis software.
• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and campus counseling services — referral resources the course should name.

Career Pathways

This is a general education and personal development course rather than an occupational one, though it introduces fields some students pursue:

• Exercise Physiologist (SOC 29-1128) and Fitness Trainer (SOC 39-9031) — with further coursework and certification.
• Health Education Specialist (SOC 21-1091) — community and workplace health promotion.
• Dietetic Technician and Dietitian — requiring specific accredited programs.
• Nursing and allied health — where the health behavior content supports patient education.
• Corporate wellness — a growing employer-side field.

For most students the value is personal rather than occupational, and instructors generally frame it that way.

Special Information

Credit and title variation

Broward College lists HLP1081C at 2 credits with 48 contact hours (32 lecture, 16 lab); other Florida institutions list versions at 3 credits, and titles vary — Total Wellness, Wellness Appraisal and Improvement (Seminole State), and Personal Wellness (College of Central Florida). Under SCNS the same number at the same level is equivalent regardless of title, but the credit difference affects degree audits; confirm when transferring.

General education designation varies — check before relying on it

Institutions apply this course differently. At Broward it fulfills an International/Intercultural competency requirement; elsewhere it may satisfy a health and wellness requirement, count as a general education elective, or serve only as a program requirement. Because designations differ, students should confirm how their institution — and any institution they plan to transfer to — applies it.

There is a physical activity component

The 16 laboratory hours involve actual exercise and fitness testing. Students with medical conditions, injuries, or physical limitations should raise them with the instructor early — programs routinely accommodate, and fitness assessment protocols include screening for exactly this reason. Institutions commonly require a health screening questionnaire before laboratory participation.

Personal disclosure and sensitive content

The course asks students to assess their own health behaviors, which can surface genuinely personal material — disordered eating, substance use, mental health difficulty, financial hardship, or a concerning screening result. Instructors generally handle this by keeping personal assessments private and graded on completion rather than content, and by naming campus counseling and health resources explicitly. Students should know that assessment results are theirs, and that campus counseling and the 988 line exist.

The behavior change project is the part that lasts

Most versions require students to select a behavior, plan a change, execute it, and evaluate honestly — including when it does not work. Instructors consistently report this as the assignment students remember years later, because it applies evidence about behavior change to a habit the student actually cares about. Choosing something genuinely desired, rather than something that sounds impressive, produces both a better project and a better outcome.