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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
Paul Jacobsen, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Health Outcomes and Behavior, Moffitt Cancer Center
Professor, Department of Psychology, University of South Florida
12902 Magnolia Drive, MRC-PSY
Tampa, Florida 33612
Tel: 813-745-3862
Fax: 813-745-3906
http://www.cas.usf.edu/~jacobsen