Cogent explanations are an indispensable means of providing new information and an essential component of effective education. Beyond this, we argue that there is tremendous untapped potential in using explanations to motivate behavior change. In this article we focus on health interventions. We review four case studies that used carefully tailored explanations to address gaps and misconception...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to assess community knowledge and behavioral impact of the social mobilization and communication strategy applied in a dengue high-risk area in Sri Lanka. METHODS A group of adults visiting selected primary care facilities in Colombo district were interviewed to collect socio-demographic data, attributes of knowledge regarding dengue and the responsive beh...

PURPOSE We aimed to identify the strategies used to support patient behavior change by clinicians whose patients had an increase in patient activation. METHODS This mixed methods study was conducted in collaboration with Fairview Health Services, a Pioneer Accountable Care Organization. We aggregated data on the change in patient activation measure (PAM) score for 7,144 patients to the primar...

Cue-approach training has been shown to effectively shift choices for snack food items by associating a cued button-press motor response to particular food items. Furthermore, attention was biased toward previously cued items, even when the cued item is not chosen for real consumption during a choice phase. However, the exact mechanism by which preferences shift during cue-approach training is ...

Both smokers and overweight persons report frequent efforts to change their behavior. Long-term success, however, is achieved by few. Interventions are needed to improve long-term success in smoking cessation and weight loss. Our research program is designed to address this need and to test a novel conceptualization of health behavior change that is based on the premise that the initiation and ...

The manuscript is an evaluative review of the literature pertaining to personal health records (PHRs). The primary focus was on revealing their potential to function as persuasive tools and their efficiency in this role. We demonstrated the ways in which PHRs could motivate, influence, and persuade patients in their adoption of target health behaviors associated with disease and medication mana...

The present article summarizes the assumptions, model, techniques, evidence, and diversity/social justice commitments of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT focused on six processes (acceptance, defusion, self, now, values, and action) that bear on a single overall target (psychological flexibility). The ACT model of behavior change has been shown to have positive outcomes across a bro...

When developing an intervention aimed at behavior change, one of the crucial steps in the development process is to select the most relevant social-cognitive determinants. These determinants can be seen as the buttons one needs to push to establish behavior change. Insight into these determinants is needed to select behavior change methods (i.e., general behavior change techniques that are appl...

This paper reviews the literature on the economics of climate change adaptation in developing countries, and identifies three key points for consideration in future studies. One key point is that all development policy should be formulated using forecasts from climate science as a baseline. When this is not done, there is risk that a false status quo without climate change is seen as an implici...