Evidence-Based Behavioral Medicine Special Interest Group: A Diverse Group of Scientists, Clinicians, and Policymakers

Joanna Buscemi, PhD, and Heather Jim, PhD, EBBM SIG Co-Chairs

With 569 members, the Evidence-Based Behavioral Medicine (EBBM) Special Interest Group (SIG) is one of the Society of Behavioral Medicine’s (SBM) largest SIGs. The EBBM SIG membership is comprised of students and professionals interested in further creating an evidence base that allows us to evaluate interventions, improve research methodology, and translate evidence-based knowledge into practice. Given that the mission of the EBBM SIG cuts across nearly every interest area within SBM, the majority of our members are also members of other SIGs. For example, 42% of our members are also members of the Multiple Health Behavior Change SIG, 37% are members of the Theories and Techniques of Behavior Change Interventions (TTBCI) SIG, and 34% are members of the Cancer SIG.

Given the EBBM SIG’s overlapping interests, we have developed partnerships across SIGs for programming at the annual meeting and collaboration on manuscripts. At SBM’s 37th Annual Meeting, the EBBM SIG collaborated with the TTBCI SIG, the Cancer SIG, the Scientific & Professional Liaison Council (SPLC), and the Cochrane Collaboration to develop a pre-conference course entitled, Network Meta-Analysis for Behavioral Trials: An Introduction and Overview.  The EBBM SIG also partnered with the Optimization of Behavioral Interventions SIG and the SPLC to develop a manuscript entitled, “Increasing the Public Health Impact of Evidence-Based Interventions in Behavioral Medicine: New Approaches and Future Directions.” This manuscript is currently under review.

At SBM’s 37th Annual Meeting, the EBBM SIG also held a midday meeting where our student abstract winner, and outgoing and incoming co-chairs were honored. Our 2016 Outstanding Student/Trainee Award in Evidence-Based Behavioral Medicine winner, Kelly Shaffer, is currently completing her predoctoral clinical psychology internship at Massachusetts General Hospital. The EBBM SIG congratulates Kelly on this honor! Additionally, this year marked a transition in our SIG’s leadership. After three years of excellent service to our SIG, Amy Janke, PhD, was presented with the Outgoing SIG Chair Award. We also welcomed our new SIG Co-Chair Heather S. Jim, PhD. Dr. Jim is an associate member in the Health Outcomes and Behavior Department at Moffitt Cancer Center.  She has an active program of research in EBBM for cancer patients and survivors.  She has been an enthusiastic member of the EBBM SIG for several years and looks forward to fostering new collaborations within and across SIGs.

Looking forward to SBM’s 38th Annual Meeting, the EBBM SIG plans to harness the diversity of our membership to propose several cross-cutting symposia that will be of broad interest to SBM. We are currently collaborating with the Pain SIG to propose a health policy brief on psychological and behavioral interventions for pain management. It is our hope that these collaborations will aid in moving the science of EBBM forward, and will serve to increase the impact of our work.

Contact the current EBBM co-chairs Joanna Buscemi, PhD, at jbuscemi@uic.edu or Heather Jim, PhD, at Heather.Jim@moffitt.org for more information and with any questions.