The term “behavior change” refers to the long-term alteration of habits. It is a major part of the marketing field, where marketers try to influence purchasing decisions by inflecting consumer behavior. Behavior change is also important in the field of behavioral medicine, where it is used to improve health outcomes by engaging the patient in preventing, managing, and/or treating diseases and disabilities.
Key health care stakeholders, such as providers and payers, increasingly see behavior change as a tool for unlocking better health outcomes, making it a hot topic beyond the psychology field. Traditional wisdom holds that patients have ownership over their health-related behaviors, such as following their medication regimen or seeing their primary care doctor regularly. But it’s important to note that other health care stakeholders can also play a role in driving patient behaviors.
For stakeholders to leverage their influence successfully, they need to understand which patient behavior changes to prioritize. This research helps with that prioritization by detailing which patient behaviors have been shown to achieve stakeholder goals.
This three part series will cover what we did, what we found, and our parting thoughts on next steps.