About Craig Becker, PhD, CWP

Dr. Becker is a professor in the Department of Health Education and Promotion at East Carolina University. He earned a PhD from Arizona State University, a Masters in Wellness Management from Ball State University and a BS in Accounting/Business Management from Purdue University. He is passionate about salutogenesis, the origins of health. He promotes and studies health by investigating and embracing those things that lead and are related to good health because seeing health as the absence of problems or disease is insufficient. Prevention based approaches have been shown to be lacking in the pursuit of high health. His research areas, therefore, include positive health, health measurement, and health professional competencies. His desire is to help everyone expand his or her thoughts about health from recovery or healing a bad situation to one that focuses on moving all toward personal and planetary health optimization.

Dr. Becker teaches courses in applied principles of health promotion, research in health education and promotion, program planning, and evaluation. He engages his students in investigating issues related to health and its causes. Dr. Becker consults with industry and education settings and has developed an active research agenda, for which he was recognized as the “Outstanding Researcher” in the College of Health and Human Performance, is an elected member to the Leadership Circle for the National Wellness Institute(NWI), and was a Trustee for NWI. With colleagues, he has published multiple articles, abstracts, and proceedings in refereed journals. Dr. Becker has focused his work on discovering the causes and origins of positive health and has developed and validated Salutogenic Wellness Promotion Scale (SWPS) to assess positive health potential. His motto is “Be Well’r” because that is what he wants for everyone and his enthusiasm for this subject is contagious.  His current focus is on developing positive health leaders and he offers trainings on Positive Health Leadership to help people develop these ideals and practices. He is looking for motivated people interested in creating pervasive, reciprocal, selfish, selfless, synergistic actions that lead to interactions from which everyone benefits which is the Practice of Paneugenesis! (Pan-All,Eu-Good, Genesis-creating or origins = Paneugenesis=Creating All Good)