Publications by authors named "Susan M Czajkowski"

In their recent Viewpoint article, Beidas et al. (2023) argue that researchers should test psychosocial interventions in the contexts in which they are meant to be delivered and that they can accelerate the deployment of these interventions by advancing directly from pilot trials to effectiveness and implementation studies without conducting efficacy trials. In this commentary, we argue that this is a well-intended but problematic approach and that there is a more productive strategy for translational behavioral intervention research.

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Background: Time-restricted eating (TRE), a type of intermittent fasting in which all daily calories are consumed within a window of ≤12 hours, is hypothesized to promote long-term weight management because of its relative simplicity.

Objective: This study reports correlates of adherence among community-dwelling adults currently or formerly following a TRE dietary strategy.

Design: A 25-minute cross-sectional online survey was developed, including questions about TRE perceptions, behaviors, motivators and drivers, and demographics.

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The BMRC has initiated a new initiative, the Behavioral Medicine Research Council (BMRC) Scientific Statement papers. The statement papers will move the field forward by guiding efforts to improve the quality of behavioral medicine research and practice and facilitate the dissemination and translation of behavioral medicine research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

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Time-restricted eating (TRE), a dietary strategy that involves limiting daily energy intake to a window of ≤12 h is appealing for weight management and metabolic health due to its relative simplicity and the ability to consume ad libitum diet during eating windows. Despite the potential utility of TRE for improving health and reducing disease, the feasibility of adherence depends upon a variety of multilevel factors which are largely unexplored. The primary aim of our study was to explore facilitators and barriers of adherence to TRE among community-dwelling individuals.

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Developing and testing more effective health-related behavioral interventions is critical to making progress in improving disease prevention and treatment. One way to achieve this goal is to use a systematic and progressive framework that outlines the steps needed to translate theories, findings, and basic understandings about human behavior into risk factor and disease management or mitigation strategies. Although several frameworks and process models have been designed to inform the development and optimization of health-related behavioral interventions, little guidance is available to compare key aspects of these models, clarify their common and unique features, and aid in selecting the best approach for a specific research question.

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The impetus for the special issue, "From Ideas to Efficacy" was the perceived need to stimulate and support a more vibrant research base that translates basic behavioral and social science research (bBSSR) discoveries to clinical and public health interventions. This special issue presents novel research that advances translational behavioral science, focusing primarily on the early phases of behavioral translation that are not as well recognized as later-phase translational science (e.g.

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Objective: To examine if the relationship between neuroticism and physician avoidance/physician visit concerns are mediated by perceptions that cancer is associated with death ("cancer mortality salience"; CMS) for cancer survivors to inform public health interventions and tailored health communications.

Methods: Cancer survivors comprised 42.3% of the total sample (n = 525).

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Background/objectives: Experimental studies of time-restricted eating suggest that limiting the daily eating window, shifting intake to the biological morning, and avoiding eating close to the biological night may promote metabolic health and prevent weight gain.

Subjects/methods: We used the Eating & Health Module of the 2006-2008 and 2014-2016 American Time Use Survey to examine cross-sectional associations of timing of eating in relation to sleep/wake times as a proxy for circadian timing with body mass index (BMI). The analytical sample included 38 302 respondents (18-64 years; BMI 18.

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Objective: The biomedical research community has long recognized that much of the basic research being conducted, whether in the biological, behavioral or social sciences, is not readily translated into clinical and public health applications. This translational gap is due in part to challenges inherent in moving research findings from basic or discovery research to applied research that addresses clinical or public health problems. In the behavioral and social sciences, research designs typically used in the early phases of translational research are small, underpowered "pilot" studies that may lack sufficient statistical power to test the research question of interest.

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It is estimated that behaviors such as poor diet, alcohol consumption, tobacco use, sedentary behavior, and excessive ultraviolet exposure account for nearly one-half of all cancer morbidity and mortality. Accordingly, the behavioral, social, and communication sciences have been important contributors to cancer prevention and control research, with methodological advances and implementation science helping to produce optimally effective interventions. To sustain these contributions, it is vital to adapt to the contemporary context.

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A growing body of literature examines the potential benefits of a time-based diet strategy referred to as time-restricted eating (TRE). TRE, a type of intermittent fasting, restricts the time of eating to a window of 4-12 h/d but allows ad libitum intake during eating windows. Although TRE diets do not overtly attempt to reduce energy intake, preliminary evidence from small studies suggests that TRE can lead to concomitant reduction in total energy, improvements in metabolic health, and weight loss.

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Objectives: To provide recommendations for the selection of comparators for randomized controlled trials of health-related behavioral interventions.

Study Design And Setting: The National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research convened an expert panel to critically review the literature on control or comparison groups for behavioral trials and to develop strategies for improving comparator choices and for resolving controversies and disagreements about comparators.

Results: The panel developed a Pragmatic Model for Comparator Selection in Health-Related Behavioral Trials.

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has played a major role in promoting behavioral medicine research over the past 40 years through funding, review, and priority-setting activities and programs including scientific conferences, meetings, workgroups, intramural research, and training opportunities. In this review of NIH activities in support of behavioral medicine over the past four decades, we highlight key events, programs, projects, and milestones that demonstrate the many ways in which the NIH has supported behavioral and social sciences research and advanced the public health while contributing to the evolution of behavioral medicine as a scientific field.

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Researchers may find it difficult to transition from conducting descriptive, mechanistic, and associational studies to developing interventions based on those findings because little guidance is available. In this article, we present the Obesity-Related Behavioral Intervention Trials (ORBIT) model and describe its applicability in designing behaviorally oriented interventions for women. Adapted from drug development research on the translation of basic laboratory research to clinical practice, the ORBIT model emphasizes the pre-efficacy testing phases of intervention development.

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Poor adherence to cardiovascular disease medications carries significant psychological, physical, and economic costs, including failure to achieve therapeutic goals, high rates of hospitalization and health care costs, and incidence of death. Despite much effort to design and evaluate adherence interventions, rates of adherence to cardiovascular-related medications have remained relatively stagnant. We identify two major reasons for this: First, interventions have not addressed the time-varying reasons for nonadherence, and 2nd, interventions have not explicitly targeted the self-regulatory processes involved in adherence behavior.

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Although deaths due to cardiovascular diseases have declined significantly since the 1970s, they remain the most common cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. A large number of cardiovascular risk factors, such as smoking, obesity, and sedentary lifestyle, are modifiable. Psychologists and other behavioral scientists and practitioners are engaged in not only understanding the mechanistic links between behaviors and cardiovascular health but also developing effective interventions for improving health.

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Objective: Improving diet, activity level, and medication adherence and controlling tobacco and other substance use have all been shown to produce measurable, cost-effective improvements in health outcomes. However, many individuals do not respond to available treatments, and efficacious interventions are often not brought to scale. Developing and implementing more potent behavioral treatments in diverse populations to ultimately improve public health involves a focus on behavioral intervention research across the translational spectrum.

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The prevention and effective treatment of many chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes are dependent on behaviors such as not smoking, adopting a physically-active lifestyle, eating a healthy diet, and adhering to prescribed medical and behavioral regimens. Yet adoption and maintenance of these behaviors pose major challenges for individuals, their families and communities, as well as clinicians and health care systems. These challenges can best be met through the integration of the biomedical and behavioral sciences that is achieved by the formation of strategic partnerships between researchers and practitioners in these disciplines to address pressing clinical and public health problems.

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Background: Within the Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) Core Measures Project, the psychosocial domain addresses how psychosocial processes underlie the influence of obesity treatment strategies on weight loss and weight maintenance. The subgroup for the psychosocial domain identified an initial list of high-priority constructs and measures that ranged from relatively stable characteristics about the person (cognitive function, personality) to dynamic characteristics that may change over time (motivation, affect).

Objectives: This paper describes (a) how the psychosocial domain fits into the broader model of weight loss and weight maintenance as conceptualized by ADOPT; (b) the guiding principles used to select constructs and measures for recommendation; (c) the high-priority constructs recommended for inclusion; (d) domain-specific issues for advancing the science; and (e) recommendations for future research.

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Background: Individual variability in response to multiple modalities of obesity treatment is well documented, yet our understanding of why some individuals respond while others do not is limited. The etiology of this variability is multifactorial; however, at present, we lack a comprehensive evidence base to identify which factors or combination of factors influence treatment response.

Objectives: This paper provides an overview and rationale of the Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) Core Measures Project, which aims to advance the understanding of individual variability in response to adult obesity treatment.

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The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the National Institutes of Health Office of Disease Prevention convened a meeting on August 29-30, 2013 entitled "Obesity Intervention Taxonomy and Pooled Analysis." The overarching goals of the meeting were to understand how to decompose interventions targeting behavior change, and in particular, those that focus on obesity and to combine data from groups of related intervention studies to supplement what can be learned from the individual studies. This paper summarizes the workshop recommendations and provides an overview of the two other papers that originated from the workshop and that address decomposition of behavioral change interventions and pooling of data across diverse studies within a consortium.

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