Formation | 1978 |
---|---|
Legal status | Non-profit organization |
Purpose | Research |
Membership (2016 [1] ) | 2,400 |
President | Monica Baskin |
President-elect | David Conroy |
Website | www |
The Society of Behavioral Medicine (abbreviated SBM) is an American nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting research in the field of behavioral medicine. [2]
SBM was established in 1978, with its first meeting taking place in Chicago, Illinois, on November 16, 1978. [3] Along with the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, it grew out of the Yale Conference on Behavioral Medicine, which had been held in 1977. [4] As a multidisciplinary organization, it attempts to connect professionals working in many disparate disciplines, ranging from nursing to public health to psychology. [5]
The SBM has two official journals: the Annals of Behavioral Medicine and Translational Behavioral Medicine . [6]
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system, its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, psychology, physics, computer science, chemistry, medicine, statistics, and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons, glia and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "epic challenge" of the biological sciences.
Psychology is the study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 146,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It has 54 divisions—interest groups for different subspecialties of psychology or topical areas. The APA has an annual budget of around $125 million.
Psychological testing refers to the administration of psychological tests. Psychological tests are administered or scored by trained evaluators. A person's responses are evaluated according to carefully prescribed guidelines. Scores are thought to reflect individual or group differences in the construct the test purports to measure. The science behind psychological testing is psychometrics.
Health psychology is the study of psychological and behavioral processes in health, illness, and healthcare. The discipline is concerned with understanding how psychological, behavioral, and cultural factors contribute to physical health and illness. Psychological factors can affect health directly. For example, chronically occurring environmental stressors affecting the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, cumulatively, can harm health. Behavioral factors can also affect a person's health. For example, certain behaviors can, over time, harm or enhance health. Health psychologists take a biopsychosocial approach. In other words, health psychologists understand health to be the product not only of biological processes but also of psychological, behavioral, and social processes.
Behavioral medicine is concerned with the integration of knowledge in the biological, behavioral, psychological, and social sciences relevant to health and illness. These sciences include epidemiology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, physiology, pharmacology, nutrition, neuroanatomy, endocrinology, and immunology. The term is often used interchangeably, but incorrectly, with health psychology. The practice of behavioral medicine encompasses health psychology, but also includes applied psychophysiological therapies such as biofeedback, hypnosis, and bio-behavioral therapy of physical disorders, aspects of occupational therapy, rehabilitation medicine, and physiatry, as well as preventive medicine. In contrast, health psychology represents a stronger emphasis specifically on psychology's role in both behavioral medicine and behavioral health.
Kelly David Brownell is a clinical psychologist and scholar of public health and public policy at Duke University whose work focuses on obesity and food policy. He is a former dean of Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy. Noted for his research dealing primarily with obesity prevention, as well as the intersection of behavior, environment, and health with public policy, Brownell advised former First Lady Michelle Obama's initiatives to address childhood obesity and has testified before Congress. He is credited with coining the term "yo-yo dieting", and was named as one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" by Time Magazine in 2006.
Steven C. Hayes is an American clinical psychologist and Nevada Foundation Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno Department of Psychology, where he is a faculty member in their Ph.D. program in behavior analysis. He is known for developing relational frame theory, an account of human higher cognition. He is the co-developer of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a popular evidence-based form of psychotherapy that uses mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based methods, and is the co-developer of process-based therapy (PBT), a new approach to evidence-based therapies more generally. He also coined the term clinical behavior analysis.
Tamara Goldman Sher, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and professor at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. She is a leading researcher in the fields of Behavioral Medicine and Couples Therapy. Sher was awarded a $2.4 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which combined both of these fields in a study measuring the benefits of couples' involvement in cardiac treatment. This grant is part of Sher's work with the National Institute of Health's Behavior Change Consortium. Sher's research has been mentioned in the Chicago Tribune, Psychology Today, on Chicago Public Radio, and published in several leading psychology journals.
Occupational health psychology (OHP) is an interdisciplinary area of psychology that is concerned with the health and safety of workers. OHP addresses a number of major topic areas including the impact of occupational stressors on physical and mental health, the impact of involuntary unemployment on physical and mental health, work-family balance, workplace violence and other forms of mistreatment, psychosocial workplace factors that affect accident risk and safety, and interventions designed to improve and/or protect worker health. Although OHP emerged from two distinct disciplines within applied psychology, namely, health psychology and industrial and organizational psychology, for a long time the psychology establishment, including leaders of industrial/organizational psychology, rarely dealt with occupational stress and employee health, creating a need for the emergence of OHP. OHP has also been informed by other disciplines, including occupational medicine, sociology, industrial engineering, and economics, as well as preventive medicine and public health. OHP is thus concerned with the relationship of psychosocial workplace factors to the development, maintenance, and promotion of workers' health and that of their families. The World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization estimate that exposure to long working hours causes an estimated 745,000 workers to die from ischemic heart disease and stroke in 2016, mediated by occupational stress.
Leonard A. Jason is a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, where he also directs the Center for Community Research. His chief professional interests include the study of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), violence prevention, smoking cessation, and Oxford House recovery homes for substance abuse. Jason's interest in chronic fatigue syndrome began when he was diagnosed with the condition in 1990 after having mononucleosis.
Norman Bruce Anderson is an American scientist who was a tenured professor studying health disparities and mind/body health, and later an executive in government, non-profit, university sectors. Anderson is assistant vice president for research and academic affairs, and research professor of social work and nursing at Florida State University. He previously served as chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association (APA), the largest scientific and professional association for psychologists in the United States. Anderson became the APA's first African-American CEO when he was named to the post in 2003. He was the editor for the APA journal American Psychologist. Prior to joining APA, Anderson was an associate director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and held other roles in academia.
Michelle L. Segar is an American behavioral sustainability scientist, author, and speaker. She is known for her research on how to create autonomous and sustained motivation for self-care behaviors. This work integrates ideas from marketing, persuasion, executive functioning, learning, goal pursuit, positive psychology, organizational change, behavioral economics, and socialization to understand and leverage the unconscious influences on the daily decision making that underlies sustained health, fitness, and well-being. She has written two books. One book is about the science behind lasting exercise motivation, No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness. The other, The Joy Choice: How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise, explains the new science and method for breaking down all-or-nothing thinking and cultivating the in-the-moment decisions that support sustainable self-care, health, and well-being. Reviewing this book for The Washington Post in 2022, health columnist Gretchen Reynolds wrote: “It offers gentle, practical guidance about how to stop setting and then backsliding on ambitious exercise and eating goals and instead find the ‘perfect imperfect option’ that motivates us … now.”
Science-Based Medicine is a website and blog with articles covering issues in science and medicine, especially medical scams and practices. Founded in 2008, it is owned and operated by the New England Skeptical Society and run by Steven Novella and David Gorski.
David A. Sleet is an American scientist recognized for championing the application of behavioral science to unintentional injury prevention and helping to establish injury prevention as a global public health concern. He has published hundreds of articles and book chapters and was co-editor of the Handbook of Injury and Violence Prevention.; Injury and Violence Prevention: Behavioral Science Theories; Derryberry’s Educating for Health; and the international prize-winning World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention.
Sherry Pagoto is a professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut and director of the UConn Center for mHealth and Social Media. A behavioural scientist and licensed clinical psychologist, she is an expert in leveraging technology, especially social media, to promote health behavior change with extensive research on the topics of obesity management and cancer prevention. She is the President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.
Monica Baskin is an American psychologist who is a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research considers health disparities in the Deep South. She serves as Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center.
John Philip Allegrante is an American applied behavioral scientist and academic. He is the Charles Irwin Lambert Professor of Health Behavior and Education at Teachers College, the graduate school of education, health, and psychology at Columbia University, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1979.
Gary G. Bennett Jr. is the Bishop-MacDermott Family Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, Global Health and Medicine at Duke University. In November 2022, he was appointed Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, effective February 2023.
Tracey A. Revenson is a health psychologist known for her research on how people cope with chronic illness and how people's lifestyles can affect their health and influence their coping mechanisms. She holds the position of Professor of Psychology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and directs the Coping and health in context (CHiC) lab.