2021-25 Strategic Plan

SBM's 2021-25 Strategic Plan seeks to make the field of behavioral medicine—and members’ careers—even more impactful. The plan has three core outcome areas, determined by our members.

 

 

Awareness and Impact of Behavioral Medicine

Many members identified a pressing need for the larger biomedical community to better acknowledge and engage with the behavioral medicine specialty. We recognize this opportunity, and one outcome of our Strategic Plan is to ensure that SBM members are seen as knowledge brokers of evidence-based behavior change science. We want to elevate behavioral medicine so that we can help members improve clinical and population health. We know members are tired of SBM being medicine’s best kept secret—we are too.

Outcome impact by the end of 2025: Behavioral medicine professionals are recognized by the medical community and medical/research organizations as the knowledge brokers of trusted behavior change science, which improves clinical and population health.

2021 Completed Actions:

• Define who we are as behavioral medicine professionals, via review of existing collateral, interviews with internal and external stakeholders, and updates to collateral as needed.

2022 Completed Actions:

• Increase readership of our health policy position statements, via expanded partnerships with endorsing organizations, increased outreach to federal legislators, and use of SBM special interest groups and social media influencers.
• Seek funding for increased investment in early-career grants and advocacy, via SBM's fundraising campaign.

2023 Completed Actions:

• Create collateral showing how behavioral medicine is relevant in solving today’s problems, via videos about what behavioral medicine is, why it's critically important, and why everyone should have a behavioral scientist on their professional team.
• Increase demographic diversity (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity) in research practices and in publication/review, via diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work at Annals of Behavioral Medicine and Translational Behavioral Medicine, including recruiting diverse associate editors, editorial board members, and peer reviewers; revising "about the journal" sections to include DEI statements; increasing article submissions on health disparities/minority health (including sexual orientation and gender identity minority health); updating journal keywords to be more inclusive; developing Guidelines for Peer Reviewers that include ways to address racism, hetero-sexism, and white supremacy in the review process; and publicizing DEI-related articles as "editor's choice."    

2024 Completed Actions:

• Develop strategic partnerships with peer organizations focused on clinician audiences and climate change, through joint presentations, training programs, guidelines, and other products with the American Heart Association, ecoAmerica, and the Association of American Medical Colleges (action had been in progress since 2022).
• Grow industry sponsorship/financial support of SBM, thanks to a 73% increase in Affiliate Memberships since 2022 and an extra $17,000+ annually in conference sponsors/exhibits since 2022 (action had been in progress since 2023).

2025 Planned Actions:

• Develop strategic partnerships with peer organizations specifically serving minority professionals (e.g., National Medical Association, Student National Medical Association).
• Educate members about how the healthcare system, independent healthcare companies, employer health plans, and payors actually work and are incentivized, so that understanding can help them improve intervention development and testing across the translational continuum (with attention to cost- and value-related outcomes).
   

 

Public Education and Behavioral Change

Scientific research is currently undervalued, and science is often disparaged by those falsely claiming expertise. That’s why another outcome in our Strategic Plan is to increase the public’s access to members’ science. We want to give members more opportunities to translate their expertise into real-world impact. As engagement with science communication increases, we want to ensure members have the resources they need to broadcast their research via every possible avenue. SBM will help members disseminate their results beyond the traditional behavioral medicine community.

Outcome impact by the end of 2025: Increased public access to, and engagement with, behavioral medicine leads to healthier environments and outcomes for all.

2021 Completed Actions:

• Increase our members’ engagement in communicating their science, via sharing examples of members engaging in sci comm and via surveying members about their sci comm needs and barriers.
• Enhance lay accessibility of our Healthy Living website, via search engine optimization, Google Ads, and social media ads.

2022 Completed Actions:

• Create a sci comm toolkit with trainings on how and why to do sci comm.
• Enhance TBM and ABM authors’ interest in and ability to promote their published research, via extra communication to accepted authors about sci comm tools, identification of newsworthy accepted articles, use of article lay summaries and teaser text, use of graphical abstracts, and instructions for authors on how to write titles and abstracts for maximum discovery via online search.

2023 Completed Actions:

• Be a leader to other organizations in conducting rigorous, community-based participatory research, via comprehensive online Community Engagement Studios resources.

2024 Completed Actions:

• Curate Healthy Living articles based on search engine optimization- and marketing-driven annual editorial calendar, leading to 15,000+ pageviews monthly.
• Investigate additional methods for sharing Healthy Living article content with the public.
• Coordinate content across SBM social media accounts that are staff- and SIG-run for consistent messaging and branding.

2025 Planned Actions:

• Utilize additional search engine optimization best practices (e.g., purposeful back-linking, microcontent social media posts) to further increase Healthy Living pageviews.

 

Indispensable Professional Resource

We have seen profound changes to the world we live in. COVID-19, climate change, and the global demand for racial justice, especially for Black Americans, have caused us to reflect on how we can improve our society. We have developed COVID-19 resources to help members adapt, no matter their professional level or role. More to come! Our third Strategic Plan outcome is to always be your indispensable professional home.

Outcome impact by the end of 2025: SBM as a society is known as the indispensable resource of behavioral medicine professionals, who research, educate, practice, and advocate for better health outcomes for all.

2021 Completed Actions:

• Develop a plan to communicate the indispensable value we already offer to members, via a robust email and social media membership recruitment and retention campaign.
• Evaluate current diversity efforts in SBM, via a rigorous deep-dive assessment reviewed by senior leadership to identify success, gaps, and future actions.
• Update SBM organizational chart and governance policies to ensure efficiency, equity, nimbleness, and valuable volunteer experiences.

2023 Completed Actions:

• Expand non-Annual Meeting programming for students, via hosting four behavioral medicine local meetups each fall (action had been in progress since 2022).
• Grow the Bridging the Gap Award (which prioritizes underrepresented scientists and equity-related projects), via securing donor funding for awards through 2027.

2024 Completed Actions:

• Retain and recruit more student members from backgrounds underrepresented in science and medicine, via reduced first-time student member rate of only $35, reduced student renewal rate of only $89, and enhanced promotions including to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Latino-serving universities. In 2024, 60% of SBM students/trainees identified as non-white and 65% identified as female (action had been in progress since 2022).
• Build members’ capacity for innovative research by identifying and providing training (e.g., at Annual Meeting, via webinars) in knowledge or methods that will provide a competitive advantage to members and accelerate the impact of behavioral medicine; since changes were implemented, SBM webinars have more attendees and they report more satisfaction with content (action had been in progress since 2022).
• Explore creation of an SBM Peer Reviewer Academy, now an annual program following a successful pilot with 21 participants who reported overall academy satisfaction, increased reviewing skills, and an expanded professional network. Nearly all continue to complete reviews for SBM's journals and have been added to Editorial Boards.
• Solidify SBM’s brand voice and tone for maximum social media engagement from members and prospective members, in a changing social media landscape, and with social media audits and platform analyses now to be repeated annually.

2025 Planned Actions:

• Define diversity, equity, and inclusion goals and metrics for SBM as an organization and ensure a recurring process exists for monitoring and improvement (in progress since 2024).
• Investigate programming and/or networking to (1) share wisdom from established and senior investigators with younger members (including advance planning for SBM’s 50th anniversary), and (2) share steps to take to prepare for retirement, and what your “career” and SBM involvement can look like after retirement.
• Perform a landscape analysis for possible future creation of an SBM Grant Writing Academy.
• Build on volunteer engagement work to identify and fix any volunteer opportunity gaps.

 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Each plan outcome includes diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, to make sure DEI is a priority throughout the society. We’ve also assessed our current diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts through a rigorous deep-dive, identifying successes and gaps.

SBM is committed to diversity and inclusion in its leadership, membership, programs, activities and decision making. SBM defines diversity as the collective ways in which people and organizations are different and similar with respect to demographic characteristics, values, beliefs, experiences, backgrounds, and behaviors. The society seeks to actively engage individuals and organizations representing various backgrounds to support our mission and vision.