Health Behavior Change and Treatment Adherence: Evidence-based Guidelines for Improving Healthcare

Each year, in more than a billion U.S. medical visits, health professionals offer disease prevention and treatment recommendations, but close to half of these are not followed. This book provides the latest theory-driven and evidence-based recommendations for addressing persistent barriers to treatment adherence within a social-ecological framework.

Written for a wide variety of practitioners, the numerous cases and clinical examples illustrate important practice principles. Each chapter includes tools for instruction and self-study (including learning objectives, a summary, review questions, prompts for discussion and further study, and suggested reading), making it an ideal text for clinical health-science courses. With a strong evidence base and a readable style, this book is for practitioners and students in medicine, public health, nursing, health education, health coaching, allied health, dentistry, clinical and health psychology, counselling, and social work. It is also for anyone who wishes to take an active role in their own health or help others to do so.

M. Robin DiMatteo is Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Emerita, at the University of California, Riverside. She authored Achieving Patient Compliance, the first book published on provider-patient communication and medical treatment adherence. DiMatteo has written 8 books and over 150 research articles on verbal and nonverbal communication in provider-patient relationships and on the measurement and prediction of treatment adherence in healthcare. She consults with medical systems and healthcare teams across the United States to develop and validate provider training programs. Professor DiMatteo received the Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy for her research on socioeconomic disparities in healthcare delivery
.
Leslie R. Martin is Professor of Psychology at La Sierra University, with additional appointments in Public Health and Psychology at Loma Linda University. Martin has spent her career studying health-related topics such as clinician-patient interactions and their sequelae including adherence, satisfaction, and physical health. She co-developed the VAX scale (now available in 20 languages) which identifies negative attitudes toward vaccines. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, co-authored several books, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior.

Kelly Haskard-Zolnierek is Professor of Psychology at Texas State University. Her research involves four areas: medical visit communication in the health professional-patient relationship, patient adherence to medical recommendations for healthy behavior and the prevention and treatment of disease, population health (with a focus on stress and health behaviors), and chronic disease management. She has published more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and 15 book chapters, and has co-authored two books. She is on the editorial board of Health Communication.