2021 Annual Report Behaviour Change

The aim of the Behaviour Change group is to promote and support research incorporating health behaviour change in primary care. We currently have over 80 members, including clinical and non-clinical researchers, from a wide range of disciplines. 

We have organised training workshops in the past, which were well attended, and which supported early and mid-career researchers to lean about new techniques to develop primary care behaviour change interventions.

We have also held informal meetings at SAPC regional and national conferences to support networking between researchers with expertise in behaviour change theory/methods and primary care researchers looking to incorporate behaviour change in upcoming studies.

Activities this year:

We developed a database of behaviour change resources and publications, with input from SIG members, to provide an easily accessible resource for primary care researchers new to behaviour change approaches. This was distributed to SIG members and will continue to be updated as necessary.

We have established a relationship with the newly formed NIHR Cross-Health Protection Research Unit (HPRUs) Behavioural Science Network. This is a network between 12 NIHR HPRUs in England which are centres of excellence in multidisciplinary health protection research. Links with this network enable us to identify new behaviour change research relevant to primary care and to access a network of behaviour change researchers beyond primary care who are developing new methods in the field.

Future plans:

We will be hosting a SIG workshop in May 2022. Details will be shared with SIG members and advertised through the SAPC newsletter.

We plan to hold another virtual meeting, either as a stand-alone event or to coincide with a future SAPC conferences, where researchers can present ongoing behaviour change studies.