Events | Science Of Behavior Change

Events

Recording | Donald Edmondson, PhD Presents The Role of Mechanism Discovery and Targeting in the NIH Stage Model

Overview: The need for effective behavioral interventions has never been greater, but existing interventions yield weak and/or difficult to replicate effects. Further, implementation of behavioral interventions at scale is rare, and may further dilute intervention effects. The NIH Stage Model provides a framework for guiding intervention development from early phase discovery through large scale implementation, and the NIH Science of Behavior Change (SOBC) program has articulated a rigorous method for incorporating the underlying mechanisms of behavior change at each stage of intervention development. This talk will discuss how the two frameworks for research complement each other, and how individual researchers can adopt practices that will yield more powerful, replicable, and informative interventions.

Recording link here.

Events

Upcoming Mind the Gap Webinar | Connections Between Traditional and Causal Mediation Methods

Presented by: David P. MacKinnon, Ph.D.

Thursday, June 18, 2020 | 2:00–3:00 p.m. ET

Register here.

About the Webinar

This presentation describes mediation analysis and the connections between traditional mediation analysis and recently developed causal mediation analysis. Mediating variables have a long and important history in theoretical and applied research because they describe how and why two variables are related. One common example of applied mediation research is the study of the mediating processes that explain how a prevention/treatment program achieves its effects on an outcome variable. If the intervention’s active ingredients are identified, the intervention can be made more powerful and more efficient. Other applied mediation examples include identifying how a risk factor leads to disease and how early life experiences affect later development.

Important recent developments in causal mediation analysis include new counterfactual (potential outcomes) methods that generate accurate estimates for continuous and categorical measures. In general, researchers have been slow to adopt causal mediation methods because of their complexity and the perceived lack of connection between traditional and causal methods. However, understanding connections between traditional and causal mediation increases understanding of both methods. The background for each approach is described, along with questions about traditional mediation and potential outcomes that causal mediation perspectives can help answer. The presentation ends with future directions in mediation theory and statistical analysis.

April 27, 2020 | Dr. Kevin Volpp Presenting on Behavioral Economics and Health

Dr. Kevin Volpp is the Founders Presidential Distinguished Professor at the School of Medicine and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Penn Roybal Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE), 1 of 2 original NIH-funded Centers in Behavioral Economics and health. He is also the Division Chief of Health Policy for the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy and a special advisor to the CEO of Penn Medicine and the Dean/EVP. He is known nationally and internationally for developing the application of behavioral economics to health and for designing and testing initiatives to improve health that have been implemented in tens of millions of Americans. He has garnered numerous awards for his research including election into the National Academy of Medicine, the British Medical Journal Group Award for Translating Research into Practice, and Article of the Year and Career Achievement Awards from multiple societies, including from NIH for work in social and behavioral sciences and the John Eisenberg Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine. He served on the Editorial Board of the Annals of Internal Medicine and as a Contributing Writer to JAMA and is now on the Editorial Board of the NEJM Catalyst.

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

Meeting Number: 191 616 728

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Events

Identify important new directions for health-related behavioral and social science research by March 29, 2020

The NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) is seeking broad public input on important new directions for health-related behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR). Specifically, OBSSR requests your input on research directions (see RFI): that will support the achievement of the scientific priorities in the OBSSR Strategic Plan 2022-2026 (see current strategic plan) and that will advance or transform the broader health impact of BSSR. OBSSR is interested in focusing on research directions that are trans-disease and cross-cutting in nature and address critical gaps in the field.

February 18, 2020 | Dr. Marie “Tonette” Krousel-Wood Presentation on Implicit Attitudes and Medication Adherence: Tactic or Target for Innovative Interventions to Improve Adherence?

M.A. “Tonette” Krousel-Wood MD, MSPH, FACPM, FAHA is Professor of Medicine in the Tulane School of Medicine, Professor of Epidemiology in the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and serves in several leadership roles at Tulane including the Associate Provost for the Health Sciences at Tulane University. She is actively engaged as the principal and co-investigator in NIH-funded clinical research and clinical trials focused on overall and sex differences in adherence to prescribed therapies for chronic diseases, management of hypertension, and health outcomes and implementations research focused on women and men with chronic cardiometabolic diseases in rural and underserved areas.

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

Meeting Number: 190 637 608

Events

SBM Grand Rounds Webinar: Integrating the Multiphase Optimization Strategy and the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology

Date: February 6, 2020
Time: 1 p.m. ET
Presenters: Susan Michie, PhD and Linda Collins, PhD
Cost: Registration is free for SBM members and $45 for non-members

Recent advances in the design and evaluation of behavioral and biobehavioral interventions include the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) and the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO). Inspired by engineering, MOST is a framework for development, optimization, and evaluation of behavioral interventions, where optimization is defined as the process of identifying the intervention that provides the highest expected level of effectiveness obtainable within key constraints imposed by the need for efficiency, economy, and/or scalability. Part of the Human Behaviour Change Project, the BCIO is a set of definitions for entities and relationships used to describe behaviour change interventions, their contexts, effects and evaluations. Development of the BCIO is ongoing and has involved a combination of reviewing, refining and extending existing relevant ontologies and taxonomies (such as the Behaviour Change Techniques Taxonomy (BCTTv1)), consultation with ontology experts, and peer review from, and discussions with, international behaviour change experts. In this webinar, Dr. Linda Collins, a developer of MOST, and Dr. Susan Michie, a lead investigator for the Human Behaviour Change Project and BCIO, will outline the ways in which elements of BCIO complement the MOST framework and how behavioural scientists can incorporate principles from both frameworks/ontologies into their work.

December 16, 2019 | Drs. Carolyn Thorpe, Corrine Voils, and Ian Kronish Presentation on Measuring the Multiple Dimensions of Medication Nonadherence in Behavior Change Research

If you are interested in viewing this presentation, please follow the link below to access the slides.

Click here to view the slides of Drs. Thorpe, Voils, and Kronish’s SOBC Grand Rounds presentation.

If you would like to read the full version of this paper, please click here.

December 16, 2019 | Drs. Carolyn Thorpe, Corrine Voils, and Ian Kronish Presenting on Measuring the Multiple Dimensions of Medication Nonadherence in Behavior Change Research

Have you ever wondered how best to measure medication nonadherence? Medication nonadherence is one of the health behaviors with the strongest influence on chronic disease outcomes. Yet, there is no single gold-standard approach for its measurement. This webinar will review the findings from a recent Delphi survey of medication adherence experts focused on eliciting best practices for assessing medication adherence in behavior change research.

Join us for a video lecture and discussion on December 16th, from 2-3pm EST.

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

Meeting Number: 195 965 196

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.

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