Evidence-Based Behavioral Medicine: What is EBBM?

Evidence-based medicine is defined as "The conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making clinical decisions about the care of patients... (thereby) integrating individual clinical care with the best available clinical evidence from systematic review."* Although most clinical interventions in behavioral medicine are based on evidence, the current evidence-based medicine movement evaluates treatments according to strict, explicit criteria. Unfortunately, many articles in our field cannot be appraised using these methods because current conventions in reporting studies exclude many of the specific details needed to judge the quality of evidence presented.

Although evidence-based medicine is a relatively new field, it is a quickly growing one in which the behavioral medicine community is eager to participate. Many of us within behavioral medicine have extensive methodological training that will be put to good use in this effort.

*Eddy DM. Evidence-based clinical improvements. Presentations at "Directions for success: Evidence-based health care symposium" sponsored by Group Health Cooperative, May 7-9, 2001. Tucson, AZ.

© Evidence-based Behavioral Medicine Committee
Bonnie Spring, Ph.D.
Department of Preventive Medicine
Northwestern University
680 N. Lakeshore Drive, Suite 1220
Chicago, IL 60611
Phone: (312) 908-2298
Fax: (312) 503-0982
Email: bspring@northwestern.edu
Web: http://www.sbm.org/ebbm/

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