Health Behavior, Chronic Disease and Health Promotion

The Health Behavior, Chronic Disease, and Health Promotion section of the journal addresses the preventive efforts needed to reduce chronic disease, injury, morbidity, and mortality.  It focuses on the behavioral and environmental determinants of health and on multilevel, environmental, geospatial, and contextual approaches to understand and promote health behavior change. The section takes a broad view of the environment, including the physical, built, chemical, biological, social, and digital realms that influence health and can be modified to promote health. This view encompasses both proximal (e.g., institutional) and distal (e.g., economic or policy) influences. Overall, this section seeks to foster research advancing a multilevel perspective on health behaviors and to address diverse demographic groups and diverse nations to advance public health for all.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Methodological studies concerning quantitative or qualitative approaches to exploring environmental influences on health behaviors, chronic disease, and injury;
2. Studies of the relationships between the environment (broadly defined), health behaviors, and health outcomes; and
3. Health promotion and intervention (especially prevention, cessation, and policy) studies incorporating broadly defined environmental variables and/or addressing novel primary-care-based initiatives at multiple levels.

The section encourages papers: (1) reporting the evaluation of natural experiments as well as randomized trials; (2) investigating the physiological, genetic, epigenetic, and gene/environment mechanisms linking environment and health. These papers should address both the environmental and biological level and should be written with the understanding that the section audience includes researchers from diverse disciplines. Proposals for topical collections and editorials or commentaries on the public health significance and future directions for these subjects are strongly encouraged.