The original faculty from the psychology department was Joel Butler, Jack Haynes, West Weinrich, Frank Lawless and Ernest Harrell who was an assistant professor at the time. Dr. Frank Lawless served as the first program director. Dr. Harrell acknowledged that many changes have occurred in the field since its beginning. It is currently more accepted the need and importance of Behavioral Medicine as a discipline. People have started acknowledging that health is more than the mere lack of disease.
Health is a much broader and complex notion.
Behavioral medicine is one of the few disciplines that provides bridges among different disciplines and provides a more complete concept of health. Behavioral medicine provides a link between physiology and psychology. People in the field have only recently started acknowledging that behavioral medicine, like health, is a broad area of study and should not be contained within a narrow notion of psychology. Psychology looks for ways to expand its influence and Behavioral medicine is the umbrella under which this goal can be achieved. If Psychology tries to relegate Behavioral Medicine to a narrow definition then the future of behavioral medicine as psychology's sub-discipline is uncertain.