The increasing role of psychology health research and interventions and a vision for the future.

Psychology is on the cusp of becoming a major contributor to the health of the people living in the United States. Over the past 50 years, psychology research and psychologically based interventions and prevention strategies have increasingly influenced the health of people and health care services in the United States. In this article, the authors review briefly the first 40 years of psychology's development as a health profession. An overview of the accelerating changes for psychological involvement in health since the millennium follows. Then, a vision for the future is presented. This article has as its theoretical base a biopsychosocialcultural model of health that places increasing influence on the role of culture, which includes race, ethnicity, social class, gender, physical ablebodiness, and developmental age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)