Tired of Behavioral Medicine Being the “Best Kept Secret”?

Lisa Klesges, PhD, Past-President and Development Committee Chair; Michael Diefenbach, PhD, President; and Monica Baskin, PhD, President-Elect

Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) members told us they’re tired of behavioral medicine being the “best kept secret” for evidence-based decision making. They told us that they wanted to see our science and our society as the “go-to-place” for solutions of today’s behavioral medicine challenges in public health, health care and industry. They were also very vocal in wanting to increase our influence on public policy. We share this vision and we are taking steps to make this a reality.

SBM has important goals to increase our outreach efforts to policy makers, communicate our science to the public and industry, and to expand our leadership development offerings for members at all career stages. But achieving these ambitious goals requires more funding than we currently have. A fundraising campaign is on the horizon, and we hope you will join us to make this next chapter in SBM’s history a success.

The SBM Board of Directors has thought about such a campaign for a while and in late 2018, the board commissioned a fundraising feasibility study. We talked to more than 50 stakeholders and tested fundraising campaign ideas. We learned that people think very highly of SBM (92% of those interviewed rated us positively), and that they support our outreach, communication and education efforts. A large majority of participants (75%) also agreed that now is the right time to move forward with expanded fundraising activities.

This was encouraging, but we also learned about members’ concerns. Participants worried about SBM’s lack of a culture of member giving, and they had questions about taking donations from industry.

To that end, we are in the process of developing plans to inspire members to give for shared goals, to educate them about our future strategies and the stewardship of entrusted funds to date. SBM is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and it is crucial that our members know and trust that their donations will contribute to SBM’s mission to advance the science and the reach of behavioral medicine. We are finalizing policies to guide our acceptance of major gifts from both individuals and companies that align with our mission and values as a nonprofit organization.

You will be hearing a lot more from us about these effort in the coming months. Please stay tuned. And, in the meantime, if you want to get involved, please email SBM Development Coordinator Eli Rehorst at erehorst@sbm.org. We would love to have you help us achieve our ambitious goals.

We are looking forward to joining together to move behavioral medicine from the best kept secret to the best-known solution for today’s health challenges.