Why Behavioral and Social Sciences are Essential to Our Health

Behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR) helps us understand how individuals and groups think, feel, behave, and interact. It provides insights on why people make certain health decisions, how social and economic conditions shape well-being, and which strategies are most effective for prevention, treatment, and recovery. This evidence is essential for informing programs, policies, and interventions that improve health outcomes.

BSSR is an important part of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) mission. By integrating BSSR into the broader NIH research enterprise we can better address health disparities and ensure that interventions meet the needs of broad populations. Working alongside other areas of biomedical research, BSSR plays a critical role in producing robust scientific knowledge and translating it into practical applications that benefit all people.

NIH supports research on a variety of BSSR topics—from how speech delays affect literacy, to developing more effective treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, to creating educational programs that help prevent teen pregnancy.

BSSR has the potential to improve health at every level by providing people and communities with the knowledge and tools to build healthier futures.

How does NIH support Behavioral and Social Sciences Research?

The Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) is the lead office responsible for enhancing the impact of health-related BSSR at NIH. The office does this by:

• Identifying gaps and opportunities for BSSR
• Integrating BSSR within the larger NIH research enterprise
• Developing and coordinating BSSR initiatives with NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices
• Communicating significant findings within NIH and beyond.

What is Behavioral and Social Sciences Research?

OBSSR developed a standard definition to reliably monitor the BSSR conducted and supported by NIH. The definition, originally developed in 1996, was revised in 2019 with input from the BSSR community, including external researchers.

Behavioral and social sciences research at the National Institutes of Health involves the systematic study of behavioral and social phenomena relevant to health.

• Behavioral phenomena refers to:

  • The observable actions of individuals or groups, and

  • Mental processes such as knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, motivations, perceptions, cognitions, and emotions.

• Social phenomena involves:

  • Interactions among and between individuals and the characteristics, structures, and functions of social groups and institutions, such as families, communities, schools, and workplaces

  • The physical, economic, cultural, and policy environments in which these interactions occur.

• Health is defined as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

BSSR studies the complex relationship between biological, behavioral, social, and environmental processes. This includes effects within the organism (like genetics, neurobiology, or emotion) as well as around the organism (like environment, social relationships, societal and cultural factors).

At NIH, BSSR is multi-disciplinary, encompassing a wide range of scientific disciplines that incorporate health-related behavior or social phenomena in basic and applied research. These fields include anthropology, demography, genetics, health economics, neuroscience, psychology, public health, social policy, social work, sociology.

Health and well-being depend on complex and dynamic relationships across individual, interpersonal, community, and population levels. BSSR seeks to understand these relationships to inform more effective health interventions, policies, and systems.

How do researchers study behavior and society?

NIH supports various types of studies and experimental designs in BSSR, including: 

• Experimental Designs

  • Behavioral intervention research tests new ways to help people change behaviors that affect their health. This type of research looks not only at whether an approach works, but also at how and why it works. These projects are suited to testing the effect of an intervention, such as programs designed to help kids reduce obesity and blood pressure or the impact of  interactive technologies on quality of life for adults in palliative care.

• Large-Scale, Longitudinal, Observational Studies

  • These studies include robust sampling strategies and use both prospective and retrospective data sets to complement smaller experimental cross-sectional BSSR studies and strengthen evidence about cause-and-effect relationships. Examples of this type of study include retrospectively studying opioid exposure and pregnancy outcomes or prospectively studying the relationship between stress and cardiovascular disease in middle-aged and older women.

• Natural Experiments

  • Observational studies that examine the impacts of major events can offer valuable real-world insights, especially when the effects cannot be ethically tested in a traditional trial, such as studying the health impacts of a natural disaster.

  • To support this type of research OBSSR developed a Time-Sensitive Opportunities for Health Research funding opportunity, which supports research to understand health outcomes related to an unexpected and/or time-sensitive event.

• Pragmatic Trials

  • Although they pose unique challenges, pragmatic clinical trials provide the opportunity to generate real-world evidence that can guide medical care and service delivery. These studies are clinical trials intended to assess an intervention in a real-world setting, moving out of a controlled environment and into realistic conditions. Examples of these studies include a weight loss intervention for Veterans with sleep apnea and a digital platform to support suicide prevention in youth.

• Small-Scale Observational Investigations

  • These studies let researchers take a closer look at specific groups and gather detailed information about real-world experiences. They can also be built into larger clinical or community-based projects to focus on groups of interest. This kind of research is especially valuable for exploring questions that don’t fit well into a traditional clinical trial—for example, how people behave in certain environments or how small groups, such as medical professionals providing specialized care, interact.

• Supplemental Approaches in Epidemiological Studies

  • Incorporating mobile sensors and assessments for passive data collection into surveys can further the integration of social, behavioral, and biomedical research. Advancements in sensor data, including wearable devices, provide additional information useful to behavioral and social sciences studies. For example, large research cohorts such as the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study,  Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program, and the All of Us Research Program are incorporating these tools to enrich their findings and better understand human health.

BSSR Work and Accomplishments at NIH

In recent years, NIH-funded BSSR has led to important accomplishments in improving health for all. This includes research, interventions, and programs that address diseases and conditions that affect Americans at all stages of life.

Violence Prevention

NIH supports research to increase understanding of public health interventions to prevent different forms of violence and the trauma, injuries, and mortality resulting from them. OBSSR has supported Firearms, Mortality, and Injury Prevention Research through funding opportunities since FY2020, soliciting research encouraging interventions in health care and community settings, understanding the underlying causes of firearm mortality and injury, and how to integrate individual, family, interpersonal, community, and structural/system approaches across populations and life stages.

This included creating the Community Firearm Violence Prevention Network, a community-academic research collaboration developing innovative, evidence-based programs to decrease firearm injury and death.

Health Behavior Maintenance

Health behavior maintenance is the ability to sustain health related behaviors over time to maintain positive health outcomes. This includes behavior such as managing treatments—like heart failure medications, antiretroviral therapy, and insulin—as well as lifestyle changes that prevent conditions like obesity, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. NIH and OBSSR coordinate an Adherence Research Network Scientific Interest Group, which sponsored a Notice of Special Interest funding opportunity for work in this area, including:

• Telehealth-enhanced asthma care for children after an emergency room visit
• Monitoring symptoms of patients with breast cancer to optimize their medication use
• Implementing physical activity screening and referral to community-based programs.

Pain and Opioid Addiction

The Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) Initiative is an NIH-wide effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis. HEAL provides research, data, and funding to improve the understanding of pain and pain measurement, develop prevention and treatment strategies, and address co-occurring conditions.

HEAL has over 1,800 research projects through 40+ research programs and 200+ funding opportunities. This includes programs for behavioral research to improve medication based-treatment, optimizing care for people with opioid use disorder and mental health conditions, and collaborative care for polysubstance use in primary care settings.

Additionally, HEAL’s Public Access and Data Sharing Policy has created an infrastructure that allows researchers, clinicians, and patients to share collective data and knowledge about opioid misuse and pain to provide scientific solutions. This includes appropriate, confidential, and fair release of publication and sharing of underlying primary data to promote dissemination and enhance reproducibility to accelerate discovery.

Tobacco Use Prevention and Control

While tobacco use is on the decline, smoking is still the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States. NIH leads and supports research on abstinence and cessation strategies and tobacco policy research.

This includes the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, a collaborative research project between NIH and the Food and Drug Administration that explores tobacco use and its impact on health. This long-term research explores why some people use tobacco while others do not, how and why people start or quit, and how attitudes toward tobacco change over time. The study provides essential evidence to guide policy, clinical care, and regulatory decisions that improve health for all.

In addition, NIH supports projects aimed at strengthening tobacco use prevention and control. Examples include:

• Research on the implementation and impact of court-ordered corrective statements from tobacco companies
• Quitline interventions for low-income Americans
• Studies evaluating license-law strategies affect tobacco retailer density.

Together, these and other NIH-supported initiatives examine the health effects of tobacco use and the effectiveness of interventions across multiple levels of society.

Physical Activity, Weight Management, and Type 2 Diabetes

Over 38 million Americans have diabetes and 90-95% of them have type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes can be prevented with lifestyle, diet, and physical activity changes.  NIH supports research activities promoting changing habits for better health, healthy food portions, and increasing physical activity.

OBSSR and other institutes at NIH fund a wide range of work in this area. This ranges from work on understanding the relationship between sedentary behavior, physical activity, and behavior during pregnancy and studying the relationship between executive functioning and physical activity in adolescents at-risk for type 2 diabetes.

HIV/AIDS Prevention

HIV/AIDS has no cure but can be controlled with proper medical care. The incidence of HIV/AIDS can be reduced by behavior change, safer-sex practices, and adhering to medical advances such as regularly using microbicides and pre-exposure prophylaxis. NIH is the largest public investment in HIV/AIDS research globally, an NIH-wide, multidisciplinary effort coordinated by the NIH Office of AIDS Research. 

What’s Next?

Building the BSSR Workforce

NIH recognizes the importance of developing the scientific talent and skills necessary to advance health-related BSSR. Training and capacity building are foundational to an effective BSSR workforce poised to address the complex research challenges of today and the future.

Training and Capacity-Building Programs

OBSSR leads a range of ongoing and innovative training initiatives. This includes the Training in Advanced Data and Analytics for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (TADA-BSSR) Program and supporting Short Courses on Innovative Methodologies and Approaches in the Behavioral and Social Sciences.

Programs like these foster the development and use of advanced methods, measures, and skills that expand the ability of the BSSR workforce to answer emerging research questions and adapt to evolving scientific needs.

Supporting Early Stage Investigators

OBSSR also provides targeted support for early stage investigators. For example, the Matilda White Riley Honors includes a paper competition that recognizes outstanding ESI research and offers opportunities to present at NIH and learn more about available resources. NIH and OBSSR are committed to pursuing ways to support ESIs to meaningful careers in BSSR through funding opportunities, programs, and awards for this group of researchers.

Opportunities in the Intramural Research Program

The NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP) allows scientists, trainees, and fellows work in a collaborative research environment using cutting-edge tools to perform interdisciplinary research from the bench to the bedside. The IRP supports research training opportunities for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, as well as postbacs, postdocs, medical students, and physician scientists. These opportunities span the full range of NIH biomedical research, including in BSSR.

Promoting Collaborative Partnerships

Institutes, Centers, and Offices across NIH collaborate on initiatives, programs, and research which advance BSSR. Examples include Helping End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) Initiative, Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, and the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.

OBSSR strengthens BSSR activities throughout the NIH research enterprise through its co-funding program, which provides additional funding for behavioral and social sciences research and supports workshops and meetings.

Beyond NIH, OBSSR also works with partners across the federal government on projects such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and the National Death Index at the Centers for Disease Control. These collaborations support vital research resources that provide data and insights for scientists across many fields.

Coordinating BSSR

To foster communication and collaboration, OBSSR leads the Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Coordinating Committee (BSSR-CC) as a facilitated space to collaborate, share programmatic updates, and convene special-interest workgroups. OBSSR also convenes the Intramural Research Program Behavioral and Social Sciences Coordinating Committee (IRP-BSSR-CC) to support NIH intramural researchers conducting BSSR.

NIH and OBSSR are committed to sharing BSSR findings with the broader scientific community through events such as webinars, workshops, and conferences, as well as newsletters and other communication channels. These efforts increase the visibility and accessibility of BSSR activities and outcomes.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

NIH is committed to responsibly developing and sharing safe, generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools for research. NIH recognizes that AI/ML has the potential for advances in all biomedical research, including BSSR. Programs such as NIH’s Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI) and the Smart and Connected Health interagency funding opportunity are designed to foster innovation solutions and advances for AI use in biomedical research and improve health outcomes.