Published on March 3, 2022 – Last month, a special issue on digital health and computer-tailoring was published in the European Health Psychologist, the official bulletin of the European Health Psychology Society (EHPS). This special issue was guest-edited by our ACHC vice-chair and secretary Eline Smit, Laura König (University of Bayreuth, Germany) and Katie Newby (University of Hertfordshire, UK), and is a result of their collaboration in the EHPS special interest group on digital health and computer-tailoring.
This special interest group was launched in the summer of 2019 to join forces in moving the digital health field forward, with its mission being ‘to advance digital health and computer-tailoring research and to provide a forum for EHPS members to discuss new evidence, underlying mechanisms and specific components of digital health interventions that may lead to enhanced behavioral outcomes’. The guest-editing of this special issue is one of the steps the scholars involved in this special interest group have taken to provide such a forum.
Content-wise, the special issue discusses opportunities and challenges in moving the field of digital health and computer-tailoring forward. Several interesting articles are included, dealing with the development of effective and tailored digital behavior change Interventions, novel possibilities to reduce participant burden and increase engagement when measuring psychological constructs in computer-tailored interventions, the use of ecological momentary assessment to study variations in daily experiences and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a synthesis of frameworks and future directions when it concerns mobile just-in-time adaptive interventions for physical activity.
The full special issue – including an editorial written by Eline, Laura and Katie – can be found here (open access).
If you are interested in learning more about the EHPS special interest group on digital health and computer-tailoring, please follow them on Twitter: @EHPSDigiHealth.