Elsevier

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Volume 101, February 2018, Pages 3-11
Behaviour Research and Therapy

The NIH Science of Behavior Change Program: Transforming the science through a focus on mechanisms of change

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2017.07.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Poor health behaviors account for a substantial proportion of disease burden in the U.S.

  • Behavior change is powerful at addressing this challenge, but it is difficult to get people to initiate and sustain desired behavioral change.

  • Scientific silos and a lack of focus on mechanisms of change have hindered progress in the behavior change field.

  • Precisely identifying mechanistic targets and adopting the experimental medicine approach can unify and advance the field.

Abstract

The goal of the NIH Science of Behavior Change (SOBC) Common Fund Program is to provide the basis for an experimental medicine approach to behavior change that focuses on identifying and measuring the mechanisms that underlie behavioral patterns we are trying to change. This paper frames the development of the program within a discussion of the substantial disease burden in the U.S. attributable to behavioral factors, and details our strategies for breaking down the disease- and condition-focused silos in the behavior change field to accelerate discovery and translation. These principles serve as the foundation for our vision for a unified science of behavior change at the NIH and in the broader research community.

Section snippets

The science of behavior change program

In 2008, a team of behavioral scientists working at institutes and centers across the NIH began to meet and discuss what the main impediments to a unified science of behavior change really were. Guided by research advances and expert-recommendations from their respective fields, the team identified three main divisions within the science that had reinforced silos in the field. First, insights from basic science, including emerging transdisciplinary domains of behavioral science, were rarely

The SOBC target classes

An organizing principal for the current phase of SOBC is the identification of three broad classes of intervention targets that are conceptually distinct from each other but highly relevant to understanding the mechanisms by which behavior is changed. Three target classes of Self-regulation, Stress Resilience and Stress Reactivity, and Interpersonal and Social Processes were identified during the first phase of SOBC as being both central to behavior change and ready to contribute to an

Conclusion

Multiple high-profile analyses conducted over decades have shown that human behavior accounts for a large proportion of variance in preventable premature deaths in the United States—to such an extent that the United States is at a disadvantage compared to other developed countries (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2013). Yet science has not yet delivered a unified understanding of basic mechanisms of behavior change across a broad range of health-related behaviors, limiting

Disclaimer

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the NIH or federal government.

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