2022 Intensive Longitudinal Health Behavior Network Annual Conference, University of Southern California

ILHBN Network Members
ILHBN Members 

Reflecting on the ILHBN Annual Meetings: The ILHBN Network has met annually since its inception in 2018. The kickoff meeting was held in Bethesda, MD in the October 2018.  The second meeting was held in Boston, MA at Harvard University in October 2019.  The third and fourth meetings were held virtually because of COVID-19. The fifth and final meeting was held in October 2022, both in-person and virtually, at USC in Los Angeles.

Background: The Intensive Longitudinal Health Behavior Network (ILHBN), supported under RFA-OD-17-004 and RFA-OD-17-005, was established in October 2018 as part of the National Institutes of Health’s Longitudinal Health Behaviors initiative to encourage research projects that explain underlying mechanisms and predict health behaviors within individuals over time utilizing intensive longitudinal, within-person protocols that leverage recent advances in mobile and wireless sensor technologies and big data analytics.

The ILHBN research sites study such diverse health behavior changes as prevention of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, smoking, drug use, alcohol use, and sedentary behavior, and the promotion of mental health, sleep, and physical activities. The establishment of the ILHBN enables consolidation and building of a network of resources to enhance current and future theorizing, measurement, analysis, and implementation of sustainable health behavioral change mechanisms.

Mission and Goals: The overarching mission of the ILHBN is to develop an infrastructure to pursue well-designed collaborative projects and complementary site-specific studies that, collectively, accomplish the goals of:

  1. Introducing innovations into longstanding health behavioral theories;
  2. Advancing the field of theory-driven behavior change interventions; and
  3. Providing a framework to guide future intensive longitudinal studies of health behaviors.

The Network members have been successful in developing numerous resources including tools and publications that further advance the field. Many of the tools can be found https://ilhbn.ssri.psu.edu/resources/tools. An array of publications can be found https://ilhbn.ssri.psu.edu/resources/publications.