Promoting Behavioral Change to Improve Health Outcomes—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Behavioral science has the potential to deliver healthy lifestyles, quality of life and increased life-course health opportunity architecture (lifetime without the burden of chronic disease). As such, health promotion and illness prevention interventions play a pivotal role in promoting healthier behaviors, building resilience and reducing the prevalence and the burden of disease. In this Second Edition of the Special Issue “Promoting Behavioral Change to Improve Health Outcomes”, we will again focus on multifaceted and transdisciplinary approaches to both understanding behavioral challenges and the interventions designed to address such challenges.

This Special Issue will focus on several interrelated themes, which include a continued focus on contemporary behavioral frameworks such as COM-B and how they can provide insights into the drivers of complex challenges. Likewise, an exploration of how concepts like the intention–action gap and dual-process theory can shed light on health promotion and also the sustainability behaviors that protect the planet and support our wellbeing. Further, health economics is increasingly being recognized as critical for quantifying the impact and value of health promotion and sustainability research. Indeed, health economics can help understand and design better policies.

Finally, this Special Issue is interested in how systems approaches can be integrated with behavioral science to work in more complex contexts and problems. At a high level, this is about understanding the health ecosystem at a policy level, whereas at a granular level it is about a more detailed exploration of individual behaviors in different operating contexts. Likewise, our future personal and societal health depends on how our current behaviors support planetary health and protect the environments and contexts we live in.

We are particularly interested in studies that measure behavioral outcomes, or those that use behavior theory to underpin interventions. We are open to studies across different domains of health (diet, exercise, mental and physical health, etc.), including those addressing the climate crisis and supporting the health ecosystem more broadly. We welcome original research papers and review articles across these broad health domains.

Prof. Dr. John Parkinson
Prof. Dr. Rhiannon Tudor Edwards
Guest Editors

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