The Behaviour and Health Research Unit (BHRU) is headed by Professor Theresa Marteau. It aims to bring contemporary understandings of behaviour from behavioural and brain sciences to national and international effort to achieve sustained behaviour change that improves health outcomes and reduces health inequalities.
The BHRU is funded as part of the of the Department of Health Policy Research Programme to provide policy makers with timely and authoritative information to support decisions on investing or disinvesting in interventions designed to change health-related behaviour.
Poor diet, lack of physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption together are responsible for the huge and growing burden of chronic disease worldwide. They also contribute to the differences in life expectancy between the poorest and the richest in the UK and elsewhere. But while most people value their health, many persist in behaviour that undermines it. The focus of the research in BHRU is upon changing behaviour by changing aspects of our immediate environments that make unhealthy behaviours more likely, most often working through non conscious processes.
A full list of staff is available here.
More information on projects, collaborators and publications can be found on the BHRU website.
Research Themes & Key Studies
(n.b. these are links to the BHRU website)
- Diet http://www.bhru.iph.cam.ac.uk/research/diet/
- Alcohol consumption http://www.bhru.iph.cam.ac.uk/research/alcohol-consumption/
- Physical Activity http://www.bhru.iph.cam.ac.uk/research/physical-activity/
- Smoking http://www.bhru.iph.cam.ac.uk/research/smoking/
Publications
- See the BHRUwebsite for the full list of BHRU publications –
- Search the Primary Care Unit’s publications page for those linked to individuals