Behavioral medicine is dedicated to advancing our understanding of scientific relations between sociocultural, psychosocial, and behavioral principles, on the one hand, and biological processes, physical health, and disease, on the other. Application of this understanding to prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation is a major aspect of behavioral medicine research and application. The field encompasses and/or overlaps onto the disciplines of psychology, psychiatry, clinical medicine, rehabilitation, public health, epidemiology, health policy and economics, and biostatistics. Examples of typical research areas include appetitive disorders (alcoholism, smoking, obesity) that are physical risk factors; self-care and adherence to medical regimens and health maintenance practices; pain; self-regulation therapies for somatic disorders; sociocultural influences on health and illness; and brain-behavioral relationships that influence physiological functioning.

Behavioral medicine as a profession has burgeoned since the 1980s, when the biopsychosocial model of health and disease was incorporated into health care practice, largely supplanting the long-held Western view of health and illness as a primarily biomechanical process. Nowadays it is the norm to encounter clinical and health psychologists, as well as general and consultation-liaison psychiatrists, in most healthcare settings, working in tandem with internists, family doctors, and pediatricians to ensure optimal clinical outcomes for patients.

While there are many books available on health psychology, clinical psychology, counseling, and other components of behavioral medicine, there is no major work tying together the state-of-the-art for the field of behavioral medicine as an integrated whole.

Editor-in-chief Edwin Fisher is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently President of the Society for Behavioral Medicine and Treasurer of the International Society of Behavioral Medicine. Dr. Fisher's areas of special interest and expertise include health behavior/health psychology; smoking and smoking cessation; chronic disease management; prevention and health promotion; community and peer approaches to health promotion; and social support in health and well-being.