Overweight and obesity are a global epidemic, with over one billion overweight adults worldwide (300+ million of whom are obese). Obesity is linked to several serious health problems and medical conditions. Medical experts agree that physical activity is critical to maintaining fitness, reducing weight, and improving health, yet many people have difficulty increasing and maintaining physical activity in everyday life. Clinical studies have shown that health benefits can occur from simply increasing the number of steps one takes each day and that social support can motivate people to stay active. In this paper, we describe Houston, a prototype mobile phone application for encouraging activity by sharing step count with friends. We also present four design requirements for technologies that encourage physical activity that we derived from a threeweek long in situ pilot study that was conducted with women who wanted to increase their physical activity. Author Keywords design requirements, fitness, physical activity, pedometer,

In this paper, we propose design strategies for persuasive technologies that help people who want to change their everyday behaviors. Our strategies use theory and prior work to substantially extend a set of existing design goals. Our extensions specifically account for social characteristics and other tactics that should be supported by persuasive technologies that target long-term discretionary use throughout everyday life. We used these strategies to design and build a system that encourages people to lead a physically active lifestyle. Results from two field studies of the system—a three-week trial and a three-month experiment—have shown that the system was successful at helping people maintain a more physically active lifestyle and validate the usefulness of the strategies.

This article presents a theoretical rationale for using the Internet to conduct persuasive public health interventions. Through an examination of the conceptual bases of persuasion, it is posited that the World Wide Web and other Internet-based resources have many of the characteristics necessary for persuasive communication and may, in fact, constitute a hybrid channel that combines the positive attributes of interpersonal and mass communication. The notion that the Internet features many of the persuasive qualities of interpersonal communication makes it a prime candidate for the application of key behavioral science theories and principles to promote healthier behaviors. The broad reach that the Internet shares with many mass communication channels indicates an economy to Internet-based efforts to communicate with large audiences. It is concluded that if the Internet can be used for persuasive health communication and its reach continues to expand, it is time for public health professionals to explore the design and evaluation of Internet-based interventions directed at health behavior change. Within the �eld of public health, much attention has been devoted to potential uses of the

The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: Document Title: Author(s):

Motivation plays an important role in alcoholism treatment by influencing patients to seek, complete, and comply with treatment as well as make successful long-term changes in their drinking. Both alcohol-abusing and alcohol-dependent people can be classified into different “stages of change ” in terms of their readiness to alter their drinking behavior. Consequently, researchers have had to consider more seriously the role of motivation in the treatment of and recovery from substance abuse and to incorporate motivational enhancement strategies into treatment programs. KEY WORDS: motivation; addiction care; stages of change; AODD (alcohol and other drug dependence) recovery; treatment; AOD (alcohol and other drug) use behavior; behavioral change; AODU (alcohol and other drug use) treatment method; motivational interviewing; intervention; patient treatment matching; literature review Motivation is an important first step toward any action or change in behavior. Sayings such as “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink ” reflect the

Some powerful and effective treatment strategies currently are available to assist substance abusers in modifying and stopping their problematic behavior (Anglin and Hser 1992; Carroll and Rounsaville 1990; Miller 1993). As treatment technologies become more sophisticated and effective,

Abstract. In affective dialog simulation, recognition and interpretation of the affective state of the user should be integrated with display of empathy by the system and with dialog planning and execution. Cognitive models dealing with the inherent uncertainty of this interpretation are the method we propose to adopt. We describe how we integrated these models in an information-state approach to dialog modeling by illustrating, in particular, their application to a decision support system which is tailored to the ‘state of change ’ of the user. In computer-based advice-giving dialogs, the system aims at convincing the user to follow a given plan, by providing the information which is needed to increase the chance of success of its persuasive action. This chance of success increases if the system establishes an empathic relationship with the user: even in domains which

this document: Hon. William G. Meyer Jody Forman Denver Drug Court Project Charlottesville, VA Denver, CO Marc Pearce Hon. Richard S. Gebelein National Association of Drug Delaware Superior Court Court Professionals Wilmington, DE Alexandria, VA Martin O. Conoley Joseph Carloni Santa Barbara County Probation Pathway Treatment Services Santa Barbara, CA Pensacola, FL Ed Brekke Valerie Moore Los Angeles Superior Court IN ACT, Inc. Los Angeles, CA Portland, OR Caroline Cooper The American University Washington, DC iv v

Addressing climate change: Psychology’s contribution

A positive, collaborative therapeutic relationship is an essential component of the cognitive therapy of substance abuse (Beck et al. 1993). To engage substance abuse patients in treatment, therapists will need not only to connect with the patients but also gain their