Events | Science Of Behavior Change

Events

2019 NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival

Friday, December 6, 2019

9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

NIH Campus – Natcher Conference Center (Building 45)

Register: https://www.scgcorp.com/bssrfestival2019

The Annual NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival will be hosted by OBSSR and the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Coordinating Committee. The purpose of the festival is to highlight recently funded behavioral and social sciences research that the NIH supports; bring together behavioral and social scientists within the NIH extramural and intramural communities to network with each other and share scientific ideas; and explore ways to advance behavioral and social sciences research.

View the festival agenda: https://www.scgcorp.com/bssrfestival2019/Agenda

October 10, 2019 | SBM Behavior Change Grand Rounds on Strategies for increasing the transparency of your behavioral medicine research

Transparent and open science practices are increasingly valued by research funders, academic journals, and the public. Increased research transparency has potential to increase research rigor, reproducibility, and access. This webinar will discuss three approaches to increase transparency in the research process: study pre-registration; open access data; and registered report publications. For each of these three topics, we will provide an overview of recommended practices; describe potential challenges to implementing these practices and possible ways to address these challenges; and provide resources for further learning. Study pre-registration is currently required for clinical trials supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by many journals, but pre-registration has value beyond clinical trials. We will discuss pre-registration of study design and analytic plan across a range of study types, as well as strategies to improve on clinical trial registration. A data sharing plan is currently required by NIH for certain grants and is requested by some journals. We will discuss the different approaches to sharing data, and discuss the benefits and challenges of making data and analytic code available for download in a public repository, as well as discuss challenges to open access data (e.g., sensitive data). Registered reports are a journal publication format where a research project is approved for publication prior to research data being obtained. We will discuss the benefits and challenges of publishing registered reports and present the status of behavioral medicine-relevant journals with regard to offering registered report format.

Date: October 10, 2019
Time: 1 p.m. ET

Presenters: Megan McVay, PhD; Laura Scherer; and Ian Sullivan

Cost: Registration is free for SBM members and $15 for non-members.

October 22, 2019 | Keely Muscatell, PhD Presenting on Socioeconomic Influences on the Brain and Immune System: Uncovering Mechanisms and Informing Interventions

Keely Muscatell, PhD., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC Chapel Hill. Trained as a social neuroscientist, her research focuses on elucidating the neurobiological mechanisms that link social experiences and health. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, as she employs theory and methods from social psychology, cognitive and affective neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, pharmacology, and population health. Keely completed post-doctoral training in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars program at UCSF/UC Berkeley, and in the Psychology Department at Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from UCLA in June 2013, an MA in Psychology from UCLA in 2009, and a BA in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Oregon in 2006.

Access the lecture via the following information:
Meeting URL: https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/joinbynumber

Meeting Number: 191 366 190

Audio Connection:

United States of America US TOLL: +1-415-655-0001

June 25, 2019 | Jennifer Inauen, PhD Presenting on Advancing the Science of Behavior Change Using Intensive Longitudinal Methods

Jennifer Inauen, PhD., is Assistant Professor of Health Psychology in the Department of Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine at University of Bern, Switzerland. She completed her PhD in psychology at the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), Switzerland. In her thesis, Jennifer developed and tested theory-based behavior change strategies to promote arsenic-safe water consumption in Bangladesh. She subsequently joined the team of Prof. Urte Scholz as a researcher and lecturer (University of Konstanz, Germany, and later University of Zurich), before joining the Columbia University Couple’s lab (Niall Bolger), and Patrick Shrout’s lab (New York University) during a research fellowship for prospective researchers awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. At her return to Switzerland, Jennifer established her own research group at Eawag as a group leader in environmental and health psychology, before joining the University of Bern as assistant professor. Jennifer Inauen’s research aims to understand the principles of health behavior change, which she studies at the example of healthy eating, physical activity, beverage consumption, hygiene, and medication adherence. Using mobile technology and innovative experimental designs in daily life, she is particularly interested in distinguishing within-person and between-person behavior change processes, and their temporal development. Based on these insights, she aims at developing more effective behavior change interventions.

Access the lecture via the following information:
Meeting URL: https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/joinbynumber

Meeting Number: 191 366 190

Audio Connection:

United States of America US TOLL: +1-415-655-0001

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Events

May 8, 2019 | Donald Edmondson, PhD, MPH Presented on Mechanisms of Behavior Change for Healthy Aging

On May 8, 2019, Dr. Donald Edmondson from the SOBC Resource and Coordinating Center presented during the NIA’s Research Centers Collaborative Network (RCCN) webinar.

To access a recording of this presentation, please click here.

Events

I2I Online Seminar with Katie Witkiewitz: Precision medicine approaches to the development and dissemination of treatments for alcohol and substance use disorders

Date: Apr 26, 2019 1:00 PM in Eastern Time

Abstract: There are multiple effective interventions for alcohol and other substance use disorders, however, effect sizes versus control conditions tend to be small. For example, our work has found mindfulness-based interventions to be more efficacious and effective than “gold standard” treatments (cognitive behavioral treatment, 12-step approaches) in the treatment of substance use disorder with small effect sizes. The current presentation will discuss the development and dissemination of mindfulness-based interventions and recent attempts to identify which individuals are most likely to respond best to mindfulness-based interventions based on different phenotypic profiles. The presentation will also highlight similar research in the area of medications for alcohol use disorder and how methodological approaches can be used to phenotype individuals to pursue precision medicine hypotheses. Future directions that include rigorous tests of precision medicine hypotheses and adaptive designs will also be discussed.

Katie Witkiewitz is a Regents’ Professor of Psychology and Scientist at the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions at the University of New Mexico. She has studied mindfulness-based interventions for substance use disorder since 2001. Dr. Witkiewitz also has expertise in quantitative methods and is interested in how the methodology can inform precision medicine for alcohol and other substance use disorders.

Register here.

April 22, 2019 | Michael Otto, PhD Presenting on Context Matters: Internal Context, Distress Intolerance, and the Application of Psychosocial Treatment

Michael W. Otto, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Senior Fellow in the Institute for Health System Innovation and Policy at Boston University. He has had a major career focus on developing and validating new psychosocial treatments, with a focus on treatment refractory populations including those with anxiety, bipolar, and substance use disorders. His work includes a translational research agenda investigating brain-behavior relationships in therapeutic learning, including the use of novel strategies to improve the consolidation of therapeutic learning. Dr. Otto’s focus on hard-to-treat conditions and principles underlying behavior-change failures led him to an additional focus on health-behavior promotion, including investigations of addictive behaviors, medication adherence, sleep, and exercise. Across these behaviors, he has been concerned with cognitive, attention, and affective factors that derail adaptive behaviors. Dr. Otto has published over 400 articles and over 20 books spanning his research interests, and he Dr. Otto was identified as a “top producer” in the clinical empirical literature, an ISI Highly Cited Researcher, and winner of the 2019 Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Clinical Psychology award from APA Division 12. His past leadership positions include serving as President of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and President of Division 12 of the American Psychological Association.

Calling Info:

Meeting URL: https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/joinbynumber

Meeting Number: 191 616 728

If using phone line for audio/teleconferencing: +1-415-655-0001 and enter the meeting number, once prompted

If using audio from your computer: Once you join the meeting, select? Call Using Computer? to automatically connect

Events

I2I Seminar: Dr. Larry Hawk

Dr. Larry Hawk, University of Buffalo will be leading the first I2I online seminar (http://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/psychology/faculty/faculty-directory/hawk.html) on February 28 from 1 – 2 pm ET. The seminar is entitled “Applying the Ideas to Interventions Framework to Translational Science Questions (and Vice Versa).”

To learn more about the seminar, and to register, please follow this link

February 26, 2019 | Linda Collins PhD Presents: Introduction to the Multiphase Optimization Strategy for Building Better Behavioral and Biobehavioral Interventions

Linda M. Collins, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Human Development & Family Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, United States. She is also Director of The Methodology Center, an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the advancement and dissemination of quantitative methods for applications in drug abuse prevention and treatment, as well as other areas in the behavioral sciences. Dr. Collins’s research interests include the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST), an engineering-inspired methodological framework for optimizing and evaluating behavioral, biobehavioral, and biomedical interventions. The objective of MOST is to improve intervention effectiveness, efficiency, economy, and scalability. Dr. Collins is currently collaborating on research applying MOST to develop optimized behavioral interventions in the areas of smoking cessation, weight loss, prevention of excessive drinking and risky sex in college students, and HIV services. Her research has been funded by NIDA, NCI, NIDDK, and NIAAA.

Calling Info:

Meeting URL: https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/joinbynumber

Meeting Number: 191 366 190

Events

March 18, 2019 | Pamela Herd PhD Presents: Social and Population Health Science Approaches to Understanding the Human Gut Microbiome

Event Date: March 18, 2019 at 2pm EST

The microbiome is now considered our “second genome,” with potentially comparable importance to the genome in determining human health. There is, however, a relatively limited understanding of the broader environmental factors, particularly social conditions, that shape variation in human microbial communities. Fulfilling the promise of microbiome research—particularly the microbiome’s potential for modification—will require collaboration between biologists and social and population scientists. For life scientists, the plasticity and adaptiveness of the microbiome calls for an agenda to understand the sensitivity of the microbiome to broader social environments already known to be powerful predictors of morbidity and mortality. For social and population scientists, attention to the microbiome may help elucidate nagging questions as to the underlying biological mechanisms that link social conditions to health. We outline key substantive and methodological advances that can be made if collaborations between social and population health scientists and life scientists are strategically pursued, as well as provide a recent example of just such a collaboration.

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