The resilience and strength he saw in chronically ill children led Jan Wallander to the then-new study of health psychology.
“I was touched by how such young beings could manage such difficulties so well,” he said. “Why is it that some children do it so well, while others have a really hard time?”
The same can be asked about parents, he said.
Wallander has focused a good part of his career to decoding how people’s behaviors, particularly children’s, affect physical health. He’s brought his studies to UC Merced, joining the faculty here as of this fall.
By identifying behaviors, he said, health psychologists can help people lead healthier lives, and they can help patients undergoing treatments when health does break down.
Health psychology might sound foreign to the average person, but it has been around for several decades. Wallander said he concentrates on the most vulnerable patients, but his field can include better understanding of such behaviors as smoking, overeating and reckless teenage driving, to name just a few of the most pressing American health problems.
Wallander’s studies here will help build up the health psychology program, which, in turn, will contribute to understanding the region’s most pressing health issues and the behaviors behind them. His arrival in the Central Valley and expertise in the health psychology field is a preliminary building block in UC Merced’s
medical schoolinitiative.
Wallander said he plans to help expand the university’s course offerings for undergraduate and graduate students.
A native of Sweden, Wallander studied at Ashland University in Ohio, and earned his Ph.D. at Purdue University. After 20 years as a psychology and nursing professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, he decided to move west. He worked as vice president of the Bay Area-based Sociometrics Corp., a firm specializing in social-science-research applications.
But the opportunity to come to UC Merced was too good pass up. Here, Wallander said, he found the opportunity of a lifetime to help build a university - and a medical school - from the ground up.
