SBM's 2026-28 Strategic Plan seeks to make the field of behavioral medicine—and members’ careers—even more impactful. The plan has three pillars, determined by our members.
Integration of Behavioral Medicine
HEALTH IMPACT: SBM members lead and advocate for the integration of behavioral, social, biological, and environmental factors in research and practice, to enhance health and well-being. Members’ work is used and has value throughout every person’s healthcare journey.
2026 Planned Actions:
- Prepare to make the case to hospital/clinic administrators and decision makers for how to successfully integrate behavioral medicine services into care models (specialty care and primary care)
- Position members to find and respond effectively to non-federal funding opportunities (e.g., foundation, philanthropic, industry) relevant to behavioral medicine research (e.g., preparing a successful application, identifying collaborators, pitching research ideas outside their discipline)
Pathways for all Career Stages
CAREERS IMPACT: SBM is the welcoming professional home for scientists and practitioners, supporting clear career pathways, education, and resources, which position them to thrive at all career stages. Members have skills to thrive in any career stage or setting. Training members to make their research impactful helps their science be “durable” and relevant no matter what.
2026 Planned Actions:
- Offer professional development opportunities across academic and non-academic sectors for all career phases (consider existing and new resources, gap analysis, standalone and bundled content that builds)
Indispensable Professional Resource
ASSOCIATION IMPACT: SBM is the indispensable go-to resource for behavioral medicine and its professionals, whose members create a vibrant community with a compelling member experience. Members have access to a professional community that is engaged, active, and supportive.
2026 Planned Actions:
- Enhance membership understanding of organizational process and structure, and convey clear membership value proposition
- Pilot test sales of SBM merchandise
- Explore additional efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the Annual Meeting, and possible setting of a "carbon-neutral by 20XX"-style goal
2021-25 Plan
Members identified a pressing need for the larger biomedical community to better acknowledge and engage with the behavioral medicine specialty. We recognize this opportunity, and one outcome of our Strategic Plan is to ensure that SBM members are seen as knowledge brokers of evidence-based behavior change science. We want to elevate behavioral medicine so that we can help members improve clinical and population health. We know members are tired of SBM being medicine’s best kept secret—we are too.
Completed Actions
- Define who we are as behavioral medicine professionals.
- Increase readership of our health policy position statements through partnerships, SIGs, and social media.
- Increase donor funding for early-career grants and advocacy.
- Create videos showing how behavioral medicine is relevant in solving today’s problems.
- Increase demographic diversity in research practices and in publication/review at SBM's journals.
- Develop strategic partnerships with peer organizations focused on clinicians and climate change.
- Grow industry sponsorship/financial support.
- Develop strategic partnerships with peer organizations committed to DEI.
Scientific research is currently undervalued, and science is often disparaged by those falsely claiming expertise. That’s why another outcome in our Strategic Plan is to increase the public’s access to members’ science. We want to give members more opportunities to translate their expertise into real-world impact. As engagement with science communication increases, we want to ensure members have the resources they need to broadcast their research via every possible avenue. SBM will help members disseminate their results beyond the traditional behavioral medicine community.
Completed Actions
- Increase members’ engagement in communicating their science.
- Enhance public pageviews of our Healthy Living website.
- Create a sci comm toolkit with trainings on how and why to do sci comm.
- Enhance TBM and ABM authors’ ability to promote their published research.
- Be a leader to other organizations in conducting rigorous, community-based participatory research.
- Curate Healthy Living articles based on search engine optimization- and marketing-driven annual editorial calendar.
- Coordinate content across SBM social media accounts that are staff- and SIG-run for consistent messaging and branding.
- Utilize additional search engine optimization best practices (e.g., purposeful back-linking, microcontent social media posts) to further increase Healthy Living pageviews.
We have seen profound changes to the world we live in. COVID-19, climate change, and the global demand for racial justice, especially for Black Americans, have caused us to reflect on how we can improve our society. We have developed COVID-19 resources to help members adapt, no matter their professional level or role. More to come! Our third Strategic Plan outcome is to always be your indispensable professional home.
Completed Actions
- Use email and social media campaigns to communicate the indispensable value we already offer to members.
- Assess current diversity efforts in SBM.
- Update SBM organizational chart and governance policies to ensure efficiency, equity, nimbleness, and valuable volunteer experiences.
- Expand non-Annual Meeting programming for students, via hosting behavioral medicine local meetups.
- Grow the Bridging the Gap Award.
- Retain and recruit more student members from backgrounds underrepresented in science and medicine.
- Offer webinar training in knowledge or methods that will provide a competitive advantage to members and accelerate the impact of behavioral medicine.
- Create an SBM Peer Reviewer Academy.
- Solidify SBM’s brand voice for maximum social media engagement from members and prospective members.
- Define diversity, equity, and inclusion goals for SBM as an organization and ensure a recurring process exists for monitoring and improvement. Two goals were set: That members understand what we are doing in DEI, and that we maintain capacity for DEI to be embedded within all SBM initiatives.
- Share "what I wish I had known" wisdom from established and senior investigators with younger members.
- Perform a grant writing training landscape analysis.
- Identify and fix any volunteer opportunity gaps.