Promoting Behavioral Change to Improve Health Outcomes

Dear Colleagues,

Health promotion and illness prevention interventions play a pivotal role in promoting healthier behaviors and reducing the prevalence and burden of disease in communities. These interventions utilize a multifaceted approach that includes education and awareness campaigns, behavioral techniques to influence individual and collective choices, and system changes to support citizens to make healthier choices. By educating the public about the risks and consequences of certain behaviors, individuals are better equipped to make informed decisions about their health. Likewise, interventions can involve environmental modifications, such as creating pedestrian-friendly zones or increasing the availability of fresh produce in neighborhoods. These changes make healthy choices more accessible and convenient. Policy initiatives, like taxing sugary beverages or ensuring vaccinations, can also guide behavior towards better health outcomes.

Ultimately, the combination of knowledge dissemination, targeted behavior change interventions, supportive environments, and strategic policies can lead to sustainable behavior change. The benefits of these interventions are twofold: individuals lead healthier, longer lives, and the societal costs associated with treating preventable diseases are considerably reduced. This Special Issue of Behavioral Sciences will focus on health promotion and illness prevention interventions to enable a better understanding of how to effectively and sustainability support behavior change to promote these outcomes. We are particularly interested in studies that measure behavioral outcomes. We are open to studies across different domains of health (diet, exercise, mental and physical health, etc.). We welcome original research papers and review articles in the following areas, among others:

• Reducing health inequalities through behavioral interventions;
• Understanding and tailoring interventions across different groups/segments of a population;
• Scaling up interventions to group or population level;
• The role of *type 1 and type 2 processes in health behavior (*dual-process theory cf Evans 2003; Thaler and Sunstein, 2008; Kahneman 2011);
• Health economic approaches to prevention;
• Analysis of intervention type (awareness and literacy, nudges, regulation, etc.);
• Considerations of individual-level interventions vs. system-level changes.

Prof. Dr. John Parkinson
Prof. Dr. Javad Salehi Fadardi
Dr. Yuka Kotozaki
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.

• applied behavior change
• dual-process theory
• intention–action gap
• illness prevention
• health promotion
• nudge systems thinking
• wellbeing
• environmental design
• choice architecture