As Behavioral Medicine is Becoming More
Global It Should Become More Regional as Well
Professor Dr.
Antti Uutela, Ph.D.
President, International Society of Behavioral
Medicine (ISBM), and
National Public Health Institute (KTL),
Finland
Behavioral
medicine is at present more global than
ever; this we see, e.g., when we examine
national background of authors submitting
papers to the International Journal of
Behavioral Medicine (IJBM) and have a
look at the whereabouts of participants
of the International Congresses of Behavioral
Medicine (ICBM's). ISBM has been gaining
in the organizational strength also. Since
1990 with 6 constituent societies, ISBM
has grown into an organization of 25 full
members, 2 affiliates and a few emerging
member societies. It is my prediction
that the growth will continue in the years
to come but this will not happen automatically
- we must work for it. Behavioral medicine
emerged as a science in the U.S. where
it has advanced strongly both in basic
research and clinical applications leading,
e.g., to the development of national societies
with a large number of members. What strengths
behavioral medicine may have stem from
its inclusion of all relevant scientific
disciplines and from its attempt to integrate
various fields of medicine and findings
of behavioral and social science. In the
last decade behavioral medicine has witnessed
an expansion into the social, political
and economic realms to balance the early
strongly bio-behavioral picture. A major
geographic organizational membership change
has also occurred and that change needs
to carry on. It is remarkable that Europe
now has 12 member societies in ISBM representing
almost all European regions (excluding
the Russian Federation). As already stated
the geographic development of ISBM needs
to go on. The progress that has already
been achieved in the Asian Pacific and
Latin American regions needs to be fortified.
Hopefully in not too distant future we
will witness an awakening of behavioral
medicine in the rest of Asia and Africa
as well. I am sure that this Thai/Asian
Regional Conference shall contribute significantly
to the national and regional health promotion.
Challenges that have already been tackled
in the previous Thai/Regional conferences
include, e.g., community development to
help the children mature healthy, rehabilitation
of drug addicts, using spiritual wisdom
in health promotion, and performing infectious
disease control are topics that have required
lots of attention and yielded valuable
information to share. We all then can
look forward to the three interesting
conference days that are ensuing.