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Behavioral Medicine

Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine

Definition

Behavioral medicine is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the development and integration of sociocultural, psychosocial, behavioral, and biomedical knowledge and techniques relevant to the understanding of health and illness and the application of this knowledge and these techniques to disease prevention, public health and health promotion, health policy, etiology, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and care. The original definition of the field of behavioral medicine was developed at the Yale Conference on Behavioral Medicine and later published by Gary Schwartz and Stephen Weiss (1977). Since that time, there have been various refinements to the definition as reflected in the preceding definition.

Neal Miller (1909–2002), an American psychologist and recipient of the National Medal of Science (1964), is often credited as being the founder of behavioral medicine. He made significant contributions to our understanding of the relationship between reinforcement...

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References and Further Readings

  • Arigo, D., Jake-Schoffman, D. E., Wolin, K., Beckjord, E., Hekler, E. B., & Pagoto, S. L. (2019). The history and future of digital health in the field of behavioral medicine. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 42, 67–83.

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  • Institute of Medicine Report. (2004) Improving medical education: Enhancing the behavioral and social science content of medical school curricula.

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  • Johnston, M., & Johnston, D. (2017). What is Behavioural medicine? Commentary on definition proposed by Dekker, Stauder and Penedo. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 8–11.

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Correspondence to Marc D. Gellman .

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Gellman, M.D. (2019). Behavioral Medicine. In: Gellman, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1660-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1660-2

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Behavioral Medicine
    Published:
    20 November 2020

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1660-3

  2. Original

    Behavioral Medicine
    Published:
    10 November 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1660-2