The Role of Behavioural Science in Improving Public Health

Dear Colleagues,

Several public health challenges are caused by unhealthy behaviour, or lack of engagement with health behaviours. Examples of these behaviours are lack of healthy eating or exercise, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, poor mediation adherence, or lack of engagement with preventative healthcare (e.g., cancer screening and vaccination). These behaviours affect quality of life, health outcomes, and health inequalities.

Using behavioural science can help to effectively change behaviours affecting public health. This Special Issue is inviting manuscripts which describe the application of behavioural science to public health challenges.  Disciplinary approaches may include health psychology, decision making, user-centred design, and behavioural economics, or others as relevant.  Methodological approaches can include qualitative or quantitative work to understand potentially modifiable determinants of health-related behaviour, such as the barriers and facilitators that affect whether a behaviour is performed, as well as  work to design and test interventions to change behaviour in order to improve health of populations or segments of populations.

There is particular interest in papers applying theories and frameworks to inform the understanding of determinants of behaviours relevant to public health, and the design of interventions to change behaviour.

Dr. Gaby Judah
Guest Editor

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.