Winter 2024
Inside This Issue
Editor's Note
How can leveraging community involvement ensure more inclusive, sustainable research and policy outcomes? That’s the theme of this Outlook issue. Ensuring that all voices have the capacity to shape the field of behavioral medicine, programs, and policies is critical to understanding the context, problems, and/or solutions affecting our communities.
The Mental Health Toll of Climate Change - Recent Data and Implications
Climate change is here now, and people are distressed by it. The world is getting hotter and climate change-fueled disasters, like serious storms, are becoming more and more frequent. People who are exposed to extreme weather are at risk of mental health problems because of their experiences in disasters; even people with fewer direct exposures are worried.
The NIH Health Behavior Theories Project and Upcoming Conference: Towards Advancement and Innovation
Health behavior theories (HBTs) have long been used to describe, predict, and understand health behaviors, and inform the development and use of behavior change strategies. HBTs are broadly relevant across health behaviors, populations, and disease contexts.
Top 5 Expert Tips for a Great Policy Position Statement Proposal
Submitting a health policy position statement, especially for the first time, can feel intimidating. But we have seen many novice authorship teams write extraordinarily impactful and actionable statements. As members of the Position Statements Committee, we would like to share the “Top 5” recommendations for authors to write a highly impactful statement.
Threading Policy and Community Approaches to Advance Health Equity
In March 2025, hundreds within the Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) will gather in San Francisco to discuss why context matters, bridging perspectives in Behavioral Medicine. One such context is policy, where SBM members have been leading the way translating evidence to close research-to-policy translation gaps through Advocacy Council activities like the Health Policy Ambassadors Program. As my term as the SBM Advocacy Council Chair comes to an end, I thought I could use our upcoming conference theme to hint at how we may continue advancing our advocacy work as SBM members (whether as advocates, private citizens, scientists and/or on behalf of SBM).
We All Have a Role to Play in This Community, What’s Yours?
Membership Council will be laser focused on enhancing a sense of value, satisfaction, and belonging in our members, but we need your help. So, we ask, what’s your role in today’s SBM?
Novel Tobacco Products and Cardiometabolic Health
Cigarette smoking in adults has declined globally by about 33% from 2000-2018.1 These trends have created pressure on the tobacco industry which is now mostly consolidated among 3 global players – Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, and Japan Tobacco International.1 This has led to the emergence of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDs), heated tobacco products (HTPs), and oral nicotine products (ONPs).1,2
Beyond BMI: Alternative Measures of Body Size or Composition to Utilize in Behavioral Medicine
Many behavioral medicine researchers, clinicians, and policymakers are interested in better understanding whether an individual’s weight status and/or body composition places them at increased risk for negative health outcomes. Body mass index (BMI) is frequently used to assess and quantify weight-related health; however, its limitations have resulted in calls for better alternative measures.
Should the Field of Behavioral Medicine Move Away from Obesity?
In 2019, Society of Behavioral Medicine’s (SBM) past-president, Dr. Michael Diefenbach, challenged us to consider “provocative questions” in behavioral medicine.1 As science and culture simultaneously evolve, the ways in which we approach this grand challenge of promoting health will undoubtedly shift as well. These shifts require an openness to reconceptualizing old ways of approaching health problems and bringing in new perspectives. In the spirit of continuing Dr. Diefenbach’s challenge, I present to you another provocative question, “Should the field of behavioral medicine move away from obesity?”
Using Mobile Apps to Support Perinatal Mental Health and Overall Wellbeing
In the United States, anxiety and depression impact up to 38% of perinatal women – defined hereafter as individuals who are pregnant and up to one year postpartum - with symptoms adversely affecting both women and their babies.1,2 Low engagement in healthy behaviors such as being physically active and eating fresh fruits and vegetables during this period further complicates matters and negatively impacts the health of women and their children.3
Leveraging Partnerships to Develop Palliative Care Professionals
Palliative care provides non-curative treatments aimed at improving the quality of life for patients and families dealing with serious and often life-threatening illnesses (Center to Advance Palliative Care, n.d.). Despite its efficacy for enhancing well-being and even subtle impacts on length of survival in advanced cancer (Hoerger et al., 2019), the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 86% of patients never receive palliative care due to provider shortages (World Health Organization, n.d.).
Identifying and Minimizing Fraudulent Participants: Strategies and Lessons Learned from an Online Mixed Methods Study
In 2023, during my postdoctoral fellowship, I was awarded the Bridging the Gap Research Award. This timely pilot award supported formative research related to the influence of social drivers of health on health-related quality of life among adolescent and young adult cancer survivors (AYAs) using online recruitment methods.
Engaging Aging Communities in Research: Effective Strategies for Better Health Outcomes
As the population ages, health research faces a pressing challenge: how can we develop inclusive, effective interventions that reflect the diverse needs of older adults? Many older adults, particularly those from historically marginalized groups and/or with health challenges such as cognitive decline, face significant barriers to participating in research.
The Postdoc Plight
One day, a group of us were driving across the Canada - USA border to attend a conference. The border officer asked our graduate student driver what we were going to do in the USA. He quickly replied, “We are students going to a scientific conference.” Later, he apologized for calling me a student and explained that he did not want to tell the officer I was a postdoc because that would likely prompt a follow-up question: “What is a postdoc?”
New Articles from Annals of Behavioral Medicine and Translational Behavioral Medicine
Awards, Honors and Inclusions
President's Message: Manifesting your Reality
“Manifesting your reality” shows up a lot in our information environment these days. In a recent article from Psychology Today, manifesting is noted as a “pop culture phenomenon,” but one that, when you dig into it, like most things, is a mixed bag of evidence-based behavior change techniques and plain old garbage (separately, I’m fascinated by this phenomenon of how bimodal the quality of content seems lately in virtual and real environments.
