To support healthcare professionals in improving adherence, a series of articles has been developped to provide digestible learning resources around the role behavior science plays in adherence, including practical insights relating to therapy areas. The articles provide a useful companion to a series of masterclasses where the subjects of adherence and behavioral science are explored in more depth.


Latest articles

The Theory of Planned Behavior: A Patient’s Control Dilemma

How do people make difficult decisions? How do people decide which career to undertake, what car to buy, or whether to take medication? Important decisions are typically the result of some degree of thought and planning, a process that Daniel Kahneman labelled “System 2” thinking in his groundbreaking book, Thinking Fast and Slow.1 What is…

Central Nervous System

Understanding Patient Attitudes: The Health Belief Model

The Health Belief Model (HBM) is a model to help understand what patients believe about their health The HBM can be used to identify detrimental patient behaviors caused by a poor understanding of a condition or treatment The HBM can be used to structure interactions with patients to enhance their understanding of treatment and lifestyle…

Central Nervous System

Patient behavior and the drivers of vertigo treatment adherence

Non-adherence factors may be organized into five categories: socioeconomic, health care team and system-related, disease-related, therapy-related, and patient-related. Behavioral drivers of non-adherence are both intentional and unintentional. Despite extensive research, no single model has yet been shown to be highly accurate in predicting patient adherence. Treatment adherence offers a significant opportunity for improved outcomes Characterizing…

Central Nervous System

The impact of non-adherence to therapies for neurological disorders: higher costs and worse outcomes

Increasing adherence to therapy represents a significant opportunity area for improving outcomes. Increased adherence can improve the clinical outcomes and quality of life of patients with neurological disorders.1,2 Patients with Parkinson’s disease have higher medical-care needs, often miss work and require care; these effects contribute to the overall economic burden.3 Patients with uncontrolled epileptic seizures…

Central Nervous System

Patient adherence: An opportunity for improving outcomes in neurologic diseases

Neurological disorders are a growing burden for healthcare systems worldwide.  Neurological disorders contributed to 5–10% of the global burden of disease in 2005 (assessed in disability-adjusted life years).1 Conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy have significant associated costs and reduced quality of life for patients.2,3 Treatment of these chronic diseases requires patients to incorporate…

Central Nervous System

The Behavior Change Wheel: A framework for improving menopause therapy adherence

Interventions designed to improve therapy adherence are often designed without any understanding of what drives patient behavior; as a result, they are only moderately effective.  The Behavior Change Wheel (BCW) framework is a useful model for understanding and characterizing adherence behavior.  The BCW highlights the importance of addressing patients’ specific concerns regarding their menopause therapy. …

Menopause

Activating menopause patients to improve outcomes

The Patient Activation Measure (PAM) and Medication Adherence Questionnaire (MAQ) are tools that providers can use to evaluate patients’ health behavior. The PAM can be used to evaluate patients’ ability to manage their health and conditions; the MAQ can be used to evaluate patients’ level of adherence to their prescribed therapies. Providers can use the…

Menopause

Heuristics and decision-making: What are the effects on women going through menopause?

The human mind has evolved to make decisions and draw the most plausible conclusions regardless of the quality of the available information. The decision-making process is influenced by heuristics, or cognitive shortcuts, that can have a significant effect on adherence when relevant information is limited. Understanding heuristics can significantly help us to understand patients’ adherence…

Menopause