The Scientific Education Council is working to address your training needs!

Jessica (Jess) Gorzelitz, PhD, MS; Kellie Scotti, MS, CHES, ACSM-EP; Scherezade (Scher) K. Mama, DrPH; Scientific Education Council

The Scientific Education Council (SEC) is responsible for supporting members’ scientific pursuits via scientific education, trainings, and events, including the annual meeting. Our goal is to help advance members’ research and/or practice by sharing best practices and providing opportunities for scientific presentations.

Over the past year, the SEC worked to understand what SBM members’ training needs are and how we can best meet them. We culled through previous annual meeting and webinar evaluations to identify unmet scientific training needs. In fall 2023, we launched a membership wide survey to further assess members’ scientific training needs, looking specifically at level of proficiency and preferred delivery format. The survey focused on ten main priority areas, including advanced research and statistical methods, health disparities and health equity research, digital tools, translational research and implementation and dissemination science, grant writing and management, professional development, community engaged research, science communication and advocacy, international collaboration and research, and climate change. For each topic, members were asked to rate their desired level of training (i.e., beginner, intermediate and/or advanced) and their preferred delivery format (e.g., one time webinar, webinar series, pre-conference workshop, etc.). A huge thank you to those members who completed the survey!

Although the response rate was modest (comparable to other surveys), the feedback was robust and is helping to set an agenda to meet SBM members’ training needs.

The top 5 training needs identified by members included advanced research and statistical methods, health disparities and equity research, digital tools, translational research and implementation and dissemination science, and grant writing and management, as shown in the figure. Interestingly, we found that most members reported having their beginner level training needs met for all topic areas, except for climate change, scientific communication and advocacy, and international collaborations and research. We were surprised to find that most members would prefer a webinar or webinar series that covers these topic areas, versus additional content at the annual meeting.

The SEC is in the process of summarizing findings from the survey, which will be used to guide future scientific education and training activities and prioritize programming for SBM members. Our Council’s goal is to build members’ capacity for innovative research by identifying needs and working with others within and outside of our organization to provide training in knowledge or methods that will accelerate the impact of behavioral medicine. We asked. You answered. And we are working to deliver! Stay tuned for updates and initiatives that will be rolled out in 2024!

If you are interested in getting involved with these efforts, please reach out to SBM SEC Chair, Dr. Scherezade Mama (skmama@mdanderson.org).