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Behavioral Medicine, Prevention, and Health Reform: Linking Evidence-Based Clinical and Public Health Strategies for Population Health Behavior Change

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Abstract

Population-wide health behavior change represents our single greatest hope for improving the health of the nation, reducing the nation’s untenable financial burden, and reducing growing disparities in disease and health status. It will require linking evidence-based individual-level clinical interventions with evidence-based community/public health interventions. (Although we focus on the United States and its efforts addressing health-care reform, the principles noted could be applied to other countries that are addressing prevention in health care.) In this chapter we briefly outline the growth of behavioral medicine from its origins in the mid-1980s – as a multi-disciplinary field focused on identifying the behavioral factors contributing to the prevention, treatment, and management of disease and developing individually focused clinical interventions to address them – to its current broader focus on combined clinical and public health strategies to influence health behaviors population-wide. We use case studies from evidence-based reviews in the field and our experiences with the United States Preventive Services Task Force and the United States Community Prevention Services Task force to briefly illustrate progress in each of these spheres – clinical and community – and to provide strategies to facilitate linkages. The recommendations of both task forces have relied substantially on behavioral medicine research and are regularly used by public health departments, state, local and federal government agencies, health plans, employers, and community-based organizations to guide and support decisions about selecting and funding interventions and related research. We close this chapter with recommendations for future research and practice.

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Acknowledgments

The views in this chapter do not necessarily reflect those of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation or the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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Correspondence to Judith K. Ockene .

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Ockene, J.K., Orleans, C.T. (2010). Behavioral Medicine, Prevention, and Health Reform: Linking Evidence-Based Clinical and Public Health Strategies for Population Health Behavior Change. In: Steptoe, A. (eds) Handbook of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09488-5_65

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