Hot Topics and New Opportunities for Impact within the Position Statements Committee

Megan J. Shen, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Clinical Research Division, Seattle, WA; Laura L. Hayman, PhD, MSN, FAAN, University of Massachusetts Boston, Department of Nursing, Boston, MA; Dawn Wilson-King, PhD, University of South Carolina, Department of Psychology, Columbia, SC

New and exciting topics, features, and opportunities are emerging this year for SBM members interested in health policy and health policy position statements. As members of the Position Statements Committee (PSC), we wanted to share these opportunities with the broader SBM community to promote awareness of and engagement with our exciting committee.

Current hot topics: First, we wanted to summarize some of the current “hot topics” in SBM position statements. Some of the most novel and impactful statements among current statements have focused on women’s health and safety. One recent statement focused on this area titled ”Strengthening Gun Safety Policies to Reduce Domestic Violence-Related Injuries and Deaths”, led by Dr. Bushra Sabri, focused on policy recommendations that could improve safety and regulations around guns to reduce domestic-violence related injuries and deaths. This statement took an important public health safety concern and grounded recommendations in the behavioral sciences to improve safety for those at risk of domestic abuse.

Other statements have focused on promoting current initiatives for legislation as a way to enhance the likelihood of impact and change  An example of a recent statement that did this is the statement titled, “Prioritize ‘Food is Medicine’ Initiatives in the 2023 Farm Bill for Human and Planetary Health”, led by Dr. Elizabeth L. Adams. This impactful statement promoted the prioritization of current initiatives to be rolled into a 2023 bill (the 2023 Farm Bill). This approach to position statements is an incredibly powerful way to enhance the visibility, applicability, and potential for legislators to execute actionable steps. Because there are so many bills and initiatives already sitting on the house floor, it can be effective to promote a prioritization of those that keep getting overlooked but have come this far rather than proposing all new legislation.

Increasing public health trends: We are seeing more statements focusing on climate change as it relates to public health, which is a timely shift in applications to overlap with the recently formed Special Interest Group (SIG) Climate Change and Health. There is much work in this space to be done around policy recommendations related to increased access to plant-based diets, reducing the major health disparities inherent in climate change risk, and linking the need for reducing gas emissions to improve health (reduced risk of morbidity and mortality related to climate change). We are excited about this new area emerging within the position statements.

New opportunities for impact: We are thrilled to announce a formal partnership between the SBM Position Statements Committee (PSC) and SBM’s journal, Translational Behavioral Medicine (TBM) to promote publication of position statements. We know the immense amount of time, work, and energy that go into authoring a position statement and then making revisions based on feedback from the committee, and we know that many of us face the need to see this output translate not only to position statements but authored publications. TBM has now formally partnered with the PSC to allow approved and published SBM position statements to be submitted to their journal for consideration as a publication as well. This opportunity enhances the opportunity both for productivity with the possibility of a peer-reviewed publication in TBM but also for impact to reach a different, more research-based audience. We want to give a special thanks to the editor at TBM, Cheryl Knott, for her work with our committee to create this exciting new initiative. To learn more about this opportunity, read the “Practice and Public Health Policies” manuscript type on the TBM submission webpage.

Given all these exciting new topics, trends, and opportunities, we encourage SBM members to consider submitting their proposals for position statements. You can find examples of prior statements as well as the proposal form by visiting the Policy Positions page on the SBM website. Feel free to reach out to the Chair of the Position Statements Committee (PSC), Megan Shen (mshen2@fredhutch.org).