OBJECTIVE Pediatric injuries have a significant impact on the medical system, costing lives and disabling many survivors. Although injury-prevention measures do exist, they are underutilized. A majority of families do not consistently receive counseling by a primary care provider (PCP). We attempted to demonstrate the efficacy of counseling families who presented to a pediatric emergency depart...

This paper highlights the collaboration and alignment between topics and recommendations related to behavioral counseling interventions from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF). Although the scope and mandates of the USPSTF and CPSTF differ, there are many similarities in the methods and approaches used to select topics and make ...

OBJECTIVE This study examined utilization of psychological or emotional counseling by suicidal adolescents to answer questions about the extent to which health services can contribute to the prevention of adolescent suicide. METHOD The study used data from Wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which involved a household-based interview with a nationally representativ...

We explore the effect of behavioral realism and reciprocal self-disclosure from computer interviewers on the social responses of human users in simulated psychotherapeutic counseling interactions. To investigate this subject, we designed a 3 Â 3 factorial between-subjects experiment involving three conditions of behavioral realism: high realism, low realism, and audio-only (displaying no behavi...

Physical activity offers one of the greatest opportunities for people to extend years of active independent life and reduce functional limitations. The purpose of this paper is to identify key practices for promoting physical activity in older adults, with a focus on older adults with chronic disease or low fitness and those with low levels of physical activity. Key practices identified in prom...

In this position paper we outline our preliminary work and future directions in building behavior change counseling systems that manage dialogue on the basis of explicit representations of concepts and techniques from behavioral medicine.

Counselor empathy is associated with better outcomes in psychology and behavioral counseling. In this paper, we explore several aspects pertaining to counseling interaction dynamics and their relation to counselor empathy during motivational interviewing encounters. Particularly, we analyze aspects such as participants’ engagement, participants’ verbal and nonverbal accommodation, as well as to...

OBJECTIVE To determine if maternal knowledge of prematurity is improved when verbal gestational age-specific counseling is supplemented with written gestational age-specific information. METHODS Prospective, randomized study of 60 pregnant participants assessed to be at risk for premature delivery between 23 and 34 weeks' gestation. Counseling in the control group consisted of gestational age...