Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019;24(1):7-25.
doi: 10.1027/1016-9040/a000330. Epub 2018 Aug 16.

Developing Behavior Change Interventions for Self-Management in Chronic Illness: An Integrative Overview

Vera Araújo-Soares  1   2 , Nelli Hankonen  3 , Justin Presseau  4   5   6 , Angela Rodrigues  1   7 , Falko F Sniehotta  1   7
Affiliations

Developing Behavior Change Interventions for Self-Management in Chronic Illness: An Integrative Overview

Vera Araújo-Soares et al. Eur Psychol. 2019.

Abstract

More people than ever are living longer with chronic conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. Behavior change for effective self-management can improve health outcomes and quality of life in people living with such chronic illnesses. The science of developing behavior change interventions with impact for patients aims to optimize the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance of interventions and rigorous evaluation of outcomes and processes of behavior change. The development of new services and technologies offers opportunities to enhance the scope of delivery of interventions to support behavior change and self-management at scale. Herein, we review key contemporary approaches to intervention development, provide a critical overview, and integrate these approaches into a pragmatic, user-friendly framework to rigorously guide decision-making in behavior change intervention development. Moreover, we highlight novel emerging methods for rapid and agile intervention development. On-going progress in the science of intervention development is needed to remain in step with such new developments and to continue to leverage behavioral science's capacity to contribute to optimizing interventions, modify behavior, and facilitate self-management in individuals living with chronic illness.

Keywords: Behavior change; complex interventions; intervention development.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Intervention development examples.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Abraham C. & Michie S. (2008). A taxonomy of behavior change techniques used in interventions. Health Psychology, , 379–387. 10.1037/0278-6133.27.3.379 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Absetz P., Valve R., Oldenburg B., Heinonen H., Nissinen A., Fogelholm M., … Uutela A. (2007). Type 2 diabetes prevention in the “real world”: One-year results of the GOAL Implementation Trial. Diabetes Care, , 2465–2470. - PubMed
    1. Adams J., Giles E. L., McColl E. & Sniehotta F. F. (2014). Carrots, sticks and health behaviors: A framework for documenting the complexity of financial incentive interventions to change health behaviors. Health Psychology Review, , 286–295. - PubMed
    1. Adams J., Hillier-Brown F. C., Moore H. J., Lake A. A., Araujo-Soares V., White M. & Summerbell C. (2016). Searching and synthesising “grey literature” and “grey information” in public health: Critical reflections on three case studies. Systematic Reviews, , 164 10.1186/s13643-016-0337-y - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Adams J., Mytton O., White M. & Monsivais P. (2016). Why are some population interventions for diet and obesity more equitable and effective than others? The role of individual agency. PLoS One, , e1002045 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001990 - DOI - PMC - PubMed