[CIHB Membership Roster] [CIHB Meeting Rosters]

The Community Influences on Health Behavior [CIHB] Study Section reviews applications concerned with the broader socioenvironmental contexts in which health, disease, health-related behavior, and normal development are embedded, including those applications that examine the interaction of socioenvironmental factors with individual biopsychosocial factors. The applications may examine social, cultural, and other socioenvironmental factors and processes and their inter-relationships with a broad range of outcomes, including mental and physical health, illness and disorder, risk and protective behaviors and behavior change, health beliefs and attitudes, and normal development and functioning across the lifespan.  Research approaches may include ethnographic and other qualitative methods; quantitative and mixed-method studies; cross-sectional, longitudinal, or cohort comparison designs; experimental and quasi-experimental designs; studies that focus on more than one period or transition of the life course; and international studies.

• Socioenvironmental influences on health, behavior, development, and disparities may include social class, deprivation and socioeconomic conditions, cultural factors and processes, institutional structures and constraints, social organization, interactions and social networks, neighborhood and regional characteristics, media, policies, social and family group membership and interactions, and racial and ethnic identity.
• Studies of the social, cultural, and socioenvironmental contexts in which health, disease, behavior and normal development are embedded may include studies of acculturation; diffusion; ideational belief and behavior change; interpersonal communication processes, development of the meaning of health and illness and implications; family structure and functioning; networks and social support; power relations; economic inequality; ethnic, racial and class identity; and social, cultural, institutional, and community change.
• Studies of social environment change may include a focus on policy development, change, and enforcement; legal analyses of policies and their implementation; information dissemination; and health promotion.  In addition, the contexts may include communities, schools, worksites or other relevant environment settings.

Study sections with most closely related areas of similar science listed in rank order are:

Community-Level Health Promotion [CLHP] 
Health Services Organization and Delivery [HSOD] 
Risk, Prevention and Intervention for Addictions [RPIA] 
Behavioral Genetics and Epidemiology [BGES]