Promoting Behavioral Change to Improve Health Outcomes—2nd Edition
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Health Psychology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 60
Special Issue Editors
Interests: dual-process approaches to behavior and change; applied behaviour change in health contexts; theories and application of health promotion and illness prevention; the influence of motivational states on cognitive processes such as attention, memory and decision-making; design thinking and innovative approaches to research design and implementation; behavioral science in policy-making and population health
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Behavioral science has the potential to deliver healthy lifestyles, quality of life and increased healthspans (lifetime without the burden of chronic disease), and, 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
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- dual-process theory
- intention–action gap
- health economics
- illness prevention
- health promotion
- systems thinking
- sustainability
- environmental design
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