Motivating future directions of behavioral medicine

The top 10 causes of mortality worldwide are heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive lung disease, lower respiratory infections, trachea bronchus and lung cancers, HIV/AIDS, diarrheal diseases, diabetes mellitus, road injuries, and hypertensive heart disease [World Health Organization (WHO), 2012]. [...]we assembled this landmark special issue as a call for action to promote research advancing the science to inform policy and practice. The participating SBM SIGs assembled a leadership team to discuss the most pertinent areas of future growth for & Claudio R. Nigg cnigg@hawaii.edu 1 Ofce of Public Health Studies, University of Hawaii, 1960East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA 2 Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA3 Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of the Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, USA 123 2 J Behav Med (2017) 40:15 their respective areas of study, then put forth a concept abstract. Furthermore, the most rigorous implementation studies of this model tend to occur in very specic environments (such as VA hospitals, or highly centralized health maintenance organizations) that do not represent the care provided to the majority of individuals in the U.S. Use of technology in behavioral medicine research Traditional intervention modalities that typically require face-to-face visits with professional staff in specic care settings have shown to be impractical for some populations.