The Health Behaviors Research Branch supports multilevel research that addresses the relationship between health behaviors, system strategies, and cancer prevention, in topics such as nutrition, physical activity and skin cancer prevention. A multilevel approach to understanding health behavior is grounded in the socio-ecological model, which posits that individual behavior is the product of social-contextual influences as well as individual-level predispositions. The underlying assumption of the approach is that the macro-level strategies are expected to have an impact on the micro-environment and on social norms that may, in turn, affect individual behavior. Research is necessary to determine multilevel influences on cancer-relevant behavior, to develop empirical approaches to strategy assessment, to refine person-by-context measurement methodology, and to evaluate intervention approaches that target social-context environment and individual health behavior.
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