Health behavior change is central in obesity management. Due to its complexity, there has been a growing body of research on: i) the factors that predict the adoption and maintenance of health behaviors, ii) the development and testing of theories that conceptualize relationships among these factors and with health behaviors, and iii) how these factors can be implemented in effective behavior c...

To effectively intervene with the overweight and obese youth, it is imperative that primary care providers and behavioral interventionists work in concert to help families implement healthy behaviors across socioenvironmental domains. In this article, the authors review current office-based counseling practices and provide evidence-based recommendations for addressing weight status and strategi...

Better understanding is needed for antihypertensive medication initiation and lifestyle modification among younger populations with elevated blood pressure. This study aimed to assess health behavior change after receiving a report of elevated blood pressure among African Americans and Caucasians younger than 50 years old. We used the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) re...

An important question in behavioral epidemiology and public health is to understand how individual behavior is affected by illness and stress. Although changes in individual behavior are intertwined with contagion, epidemiologists today do not have sensing or modeling tools to quantitatively measure its effects in real-world conditions. In this paper, we propose a novel application of ubiquitou...

Adoption and maintenance of health behaviors require two separate processes that take place in a motivation phase and in a volition phase. First, an intention to change is developed, among others, on the basis of self-beliefs. Second, self-regulation is at stake when it comes to planning, initiating, maintaining, and relapse management. Social cognition models of health behavior change address ...

Can you imagine a city that feels, understands, and cares about your wellbeing? Future cities will reshape human behavior in countless ways. New strategies and models of urban spaces are required for creating future cities to properly respond to human activity, environmental conditions, and market dynamics. Persuasive urban systems will play an important role in making cities more livable and r...

We investigated whether "hidden" (or unobserved) social networks were evident in a 2011 physical activity behavior change intervention in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Results showed evidence of unobserved social networks in the intervention and illustrated how the network evolved over short periods and affected behavior. Behavior change interventions should account for the interaction among parti...

The behavior change process is a dynamic journey with different informational and motivational needs across its different stages; yet current technologies for behavior change are static. In our recent deployment of Habito, an activity tracking mobile app, we found individuals ‘readiness’ to behavior change (or the stage of behavior change they were in) to be a strong predictor of adoption. Indi...

In this thesis we have focused on the techniques and principles from the field of human com-puter interaction to design, implement and evaluate the Kristina coaching system. We paidspecial attention to the effects on user perception when feedback was presented in differentformats.Kristina is a multi-device coaching system. It uses data from different input devices tomeasure ...