Behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR) is essential to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mission, which is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and apply that knowledge to optimize health and prevent or reduce illness for all people. Because BSSR provides valuable insights into human behavior—including how individuals and groups think, feel, behave, and interact—findings from BSSR can inform interventions and public health strategies to directly affect health outcomes.

BSSR is especially valuable to health promotion and disease prevention because research suggests that the chronic disease burden and all-cause mortality rates in the United States may be largely attributed to preventable high-risk behaviors, such as low physical activity, high sedentary behavior, poor diet, and tobacco and alcohol use.^1,2 Moreover, incorporating BSSR into the broad NIH research enterprise helps address health disparities, promote health equity, and ensure that interventions are culturally sensitive and responsive to the needs of diverse populations. BSSR plays a critical role in producing robust scientific knowledge and translating that knowledge into practical applications that benefit the health of all people.

Since 2019, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) has broadly defined BSSR at NIH as research that “involves the systematic study of behavioral and social phenomena relevant to health.”

• Behavioral phenomena include both the observable actions of individuals or groups and mental phenomena, such as knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, motivations, perceptions, cognition, and emotions.
• Social phenomena include interactions between and among individuals; the characteristics, structures, and functions of social groups and institutions (e.g., families, communities, schools, workplaces); and the physical, economic, cultural, and policy environments in which social and behavioral phenomena occur.
• Health refers to a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

The behavioral and social sciences include a diverse set of scientific disciplines that incorporate health-related behavior or social phenomena in basic and applied research, including anthropology, demography, genetics, health economics, neuroscience, psychology, public health, social policy, social work, sociology, and related subfields. Health and well-being depend on complex and dynamic relationships among factors across individual, interpersonal, community, and population levels. Therefore, a multidisciplinary approach to biological, behavioral, and social phenomena is essential to developing effective and sustainable approaches to improve health.

BSSR encompasses the entire translational research continuum, from fundamental and foundational science to the development and testing of actionable health-related interventions and policies that may have an impact at the individual, group, or population level. BSSR also includes dissemination and implementation research focused on how to accelerate and enhance the widespread adoption, acceptability, and scalability of evidence-based approaches to improve health.³

Finally, BSSR is essential for continuing to improve health equity and eliminate health disparities by identifying factors that mitigate or exacerbate inequity and the development of approaches to address these factors at social, organizational, and environmental levels.⁴

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