About

Ensuring everyone has what they need to be healthy

Most of the world’s health challenges have behavioral causes and can be greatly helped by behavioral solutions. Unhealthy behaviors like tobacco use, sedentary lifestyle, poor sleep, and unhealthy eating play a key contributing role for much of the diseases, suffering, and early deaths in the United States. Healthy behaviors—like quitting smoking, exercising, sleeping well, eating right, getting cancer screenings, managing stress, getting vaccinated, and using mindfulness techniques—can prevent disease, be a vital part of a disease treatment plan, and significantly improve quality of life.

But these behaviors are easier said than done. That's where behavioral medicine comes in. Behavioral medicine is a multi-disciplinary field with scientifically proven strategies for improving health behaviors in individual patients' lives and in entire communities. What you do matters, and so does where you live. The Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) is here to help.

Working together for better health

SBM is a nonprofit organization composed of researchers, clinicians, educators, industry professionals, and policymakers from more than 20 healthcare disciplines. They focus on behavioral, psychosocial, environmental, and biomedical theory, knowledge, and interventions relevant to health and disease.

SBM members conduct research on conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, obesity, diabetes, chronic pain, and cancer. They conduct research on specialty populations like children, women, veterans, aging adults, and minority groups. And they conduct research on clinical care and healthcare delivery, from in-person appointments to telemedicine and health apps.

SBM members then use research findings to improve their own clinical practice and the lives of their patients. They also use research findings to improve public health policies and to make healthcare cheaper and fairer. They do this through individual work and in strategic partnerships with community groups, corporations, government entities, legislators, and other professional organizations.

They are supported by SBM every step of the way. We’ve been helping members do this important work since 1978.