OBSSR Past Events

The OBSSR hosts virtual and in-person meetings that highlight behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR). In coordination with the NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices, other government agencies, and the wider BSSR community, OBSSR facilitates opportunities to network, collaborate, explore, and advance BSSR.

OBSSR hosts a Director’s Webinar Series on a variety of BSSR topics to help communicate BSSR findings and other relevant BSSR information. OBSSR’s annual in-person meetings include the NIH Matilda White Riley Behavioral and Social Sciences Honors and the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival. Subscribe to receive updates on the latest OBSSR and BSSR-related event information.

View the list of upcoming OBSSR events.

Past Events by Year

2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017
September 22, 2023, 11:00am - 3:00pm | Online

OBSSR and the Adherence Research Network at NIH are hosting a series of workshops titled An Action Agenda: Promoting the Science and Practice of Health Behavior Maintenance. The goal of this workshop series is to develop a more complete understanding of health behavior maintenance to promote and sustain health outcomes. Workshop 3 aims to share the state of the science for interventions to promote behavior maintenance across behaviors, disease contexts, and populations, emphasizing innovative approaches to support and understand maintenance behaviors and processes in the context of intervention research. Particular attention will be given to addressing health equity and disparities in intervention development. The first half of Workshop 3 will highlight example interventions for promoting behavior maintenance. While the focus of this workshop is person-based interventions to promote behavior maintenance, examples also will explore the relative effects of multilevel interventions. The second half of the workshop will include a panel discussion highlighting gaps and opportunities to advance understanding of behavior maintenance in behavioral interventions.

Register for this virtual event:
https://www.scgcorp.com/behavior-sept2023/

September 20, 2023, 11:00am - 4:30pm | Online

OBSSR and the Adherence Research Network at NIH are hosting a series of workshops titled An Action Agenda: Promoting the Science and Practice of Health Behavior Maintenance. The goal of this workshop series is to develop a more complete understanding of health behavior maintenance to promote and sustain health outcomes. Workshop 2 will describe the state of the science regarding the criteria and tools that are used to conceptualize and assess behavioral maintenance behaviors across disease contexts and populations. The first half of Workshop 2 will focus on how behavior maintenance is defined across various exemplar behaviors, including how changes in patterns of behavior are conceptualized and the criteria used to identify whether someone has reached maintenance and whether someone has or has not successfully sustained maintenance. Presentations will be followed by a discussion of synergies, points of potential disconnect, and commonalities across behaviors. The second half of the workshop will highlight innovative tools and methodologies that have been developed and tested to measure and monitor behavior maintenance in daily life and across contexts.

Register for this virtual event:
https://www.scgcorp.com/behavior-sept2023/

September 19, 2023, 2:00 - 3:00pm | Online
Presenter: Neil Lewis, Jr., Ph.D., Cornell University

Presentation topic: The Theoretical and Practical Importance of Advancing Health Equity

Health equity has become a hot topic over the past few years. The COVID-19 pandemic made salient just how separate and unequal the United States remains in modern life, and the consequences of that inequality for the health and wellbeing of individuals and broader collectives. In response, scientists, policymakers, and the broader public renewed their interest in (or became interested in the first time) what can be done to address these issues and improve health equity in our society. Although broad interest in health equity is relatively new, research on this topic is extensive—social scientists have been studying it for decades. In this talk, I will discuss what we have learned (and what we still need to learn), the implications of that knowledge and how it is generated, and why the pursuit of health equity is important for advancing theories across the sciences, which has practical benefits for broader society.

Register for this virtual event:
https://scgcorp.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_v8ehe3uLR3OM_YNIl8w99w#/registration

August 4, 2023, 9:00 - 10:30am | Online

Location: https://nih.zoomgov.com/j/1612552260?pwd=WkwvQkZaengxVUFOL3A5dTVHWHBDdz09

The NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Coordinating Committee (BSSR-CC) was established to enhance information exchange, communication, integration, and coordination of behavioral and social sciences research/training activities at the NIH. The BSSR-CC alternates between closed and open meetings each month. In Open BSSR-CC sessions, the public, including representatives of professional organizations, are welcome to attend, and the content of meetings is restricted to those topics appropriate for public awareness or discussion.

June 15, 2023, 1:00 - 3:15pm | Online

On June 14 and 15, 2023, OBSSR and collaborating NIH ICOs will host a virtual workshop, Advancing the science of aggression across species and disciplines. The workshop will be available for live public viewing on the NIH Videocast. Goals of the workshop include bringing together both animal and human aggression researchers from various backgrounds to facilitate dialogue across disciplines, individual and interpersonal levels of analysis, lifespan, and disorders/diseases; identifying barriers and potential solutions to move research on basic mechanisms of aggression and health to inform intervention development as well as identify opportunities for more use-inspired basic research; and identifying research gaps and opportunities in the science of aggression and health in the service of advancing progress in prevention, assessment, and treatment.

Registration is not required. This virtual workshop will be live streamed through NIH Videocast. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions through the live videocast.

June 14, 2023: https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=49267

Plenary Speakers:
Dayu Lin, Ph.D., NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Terrie E. Moffitt, Ph.D., Duke University, King’s College London

June 15, 2023: https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=49269

Plenary Speakers:
L. Syd M Johnson, Upstate Medical University
Celia Fisher, Fordham University

June 14, 2023, 1:00 - 5:00pm | Online

On June 14 and 15, 2023, OBSSR and collaborating NIH ICOs will host a virtual workshop, Advancing the science of aggression across species and disciplines. The workshop will be available for live public viewing on the NIH Videocast. Goals of the workshop include bringing together both animal and human aggression researchers from various backgrounds to facilitate dialogue across disciplines, individual and interpersonal levels of analysis, lifespan, and disorders/diseases; identifying barriers and potential solutions to move research on basic mechanisms of aggression and health to inform intervention development as well as identify opportunities for more use-inspired basic research; and identifying research gaps and opportunities in the science of aggression and health in the service of advancing progress in prevention, assessment, and treatment.

Registration is not required. This virtual workshop will be live streamed through NIH Videocast. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions through the live videocast.

June 14, 2023: https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=49267

Plenary Speakers:
Dayu Lin, Ph.D., NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Terrie E. Moffitt, Ph.D., Duke University, King’s College London

June 15, 2023: https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=49269

Plenary Speakers:
L. Syd M Johnson, Upstate Medical University
Celia Fisher, Fordham University

May 16, 2023, 2:00 - 3:00pm | Online
Presenter: Megan L. Ranney, MD, MPH, FACEP, Brown University School of Public Health

The United States had more mass shootings than days of the year in 2022, and firearm injury has overtaken car crashes as the leading cause of death for American children. Meanwhile, our youth — particularly young women and sexual- and gender-minority youth — are reporting unprecedented rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. In this talk, Dr. Ranney will present work that illuminates the current state of knowledge on physical, digital, and firearm violence and co-occurring disorders (such as depressive symptoms and substance use disorder). She will discuss novel approaches, drawn from her and others’ work, to studying, preventing, and treating these interdependent crises across the social-ecological model. Attendees will leave with clarity on what we know, what we don’t know, and where we need to move faster.

May 15, 2023, 1:30 - 4:45pm | Virtual
Presenter: Jennifer J. Manly, Ph.D., Columbia University Irving Medical Center

This half-day event featured a keynote address from the 2023 Distinguished Lecturer, Jennifer J. Manly, Ph.D., and highlighted innovative behavioral and social sciences research findings from four Early-stage Investigator (ESI) Honorees.

April 7, 2023, 9:00 - 10:30am | Online

The NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Coordinating Committee (BSSR-CC) was established to enhance information exchange, communication, integration, and coordination of behavioral and social sciences research/training activities at the NIH. The BSSR-CC alternates between closed and open meetings each month. In Open BSSR-CC sessions, the public, including representatives of professional organizations, are welcome to attend, and the content of meetings is restricted to those topics appropriate for public awareness or discussion.

March 28, 2023, 2:30 - 3:30pm | Online
Presenter: Monica McLemore Ph.D., M.P.H., RN

The purpose of this session is to honor the work that has been done toward health equity and to move beyond reproductive health and rights to reproductive justice. Participants will vision about the blueprint for reproductive justice and focus attention on what we should be working toward.