Objectives
The Center for the Advancement of Health was established in 1992 to be a voice for change in the health system. The mission of the Center is to achieve the widespread acceptance and use of a view of health that recognizes the contributions of physical, behavioral, psychological, social, and environmental factors in promoting health and preventing and treating disease.

In the 21st century, a growing body of evidence supports an expanded view of health that recognizes the powerful influence of psychological, social, behavioral, economic, environmental, and other non-biomedical factors in determining the onset of some diseases, the progression of many, and the management of nearly all.

In addition, we now know that the presence or absence of a disease is only one determinant of health status. The path to illness is more complex. Gender, race, educational background, and economic status significantly impact social circumstance and environment. These circumstances, in turn, shape behaviors and lifestyles that may yield sound mental and physical health but also may contribute to the onset and progression of disease or sustain or aggravate chronic conditions.

At the same time, factors associated with traditional biomedical enterprise, for example, training, practice norms, financial incentives, and patient expectations continue to produce a rising spiral of technological and pharmacological interventions. These are frequently accompanied by excessive and expensive diagnostic testing medical and surgical procedures performed, at times, without clear understanding of significant aspects of causes or outcomes by either patient or physician. Behavioral, social and emotional factors as possible avenues to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment are often unknown or ignored.

Approach
It is clear that we will be unable to solve the major health problems of our time unless we fully integrate biomedical and behavioral science into health research, policy, and practice.

The Center for the Advancement of Health is committed to increasing the amount of high quality research in health and behavior and to translating its findings into effective health care practice and policy. To do so, the Center functions in part as a think tank in the gathering, synthesizing, producing, and disseminating of ideas and materials. It functions as a communications firm, maintaining a strong capacity to interact frequently with its target publics. And, above all, the Center serves as a vital and respected authority on the expanded view of health, its place within the scientific enterprise, and the limits and potential of the science that supports it.

The primary goals of the Center for the Advancement of Health are to:

Support strengthening the knowledge base: As part of the Center's effort to support the health and behavior research community, we convened and chair the Health and Behavior Alliance. The Alliance is a consortium of 26 biobehavioral professional research societies representing over 250,000 researchers. The Center publishes an e-newsletter, HABIT, (Health and Behavior Information Transfer) every three weeks to communicate with the health and behavior community. HABIT is sent to more than 4,000 researchers across the country.

Communicate the knowledge base: Communication is a core activity that is essential to everything the Center undertakes. Examples of communications activities include:

Promoting Health and Behavior Research: Each month, the Center prepares and disseminates news releases about the most important health and behavior research findings being published. These are both posted on the Internet at the American Association for the Advancement of Science website, Eurekalert!, and sent to approximately 900 journalists from our media list. Within the past six months, 61 releases have been distributed. These have resulted in more than 75 queries by journalists for additional information, and we have records of approximately 150 "hits" in media outlets large and small.

Circulating Facts of Life: Our monthly issue-backgrounder for health reporters, Facts of Life, is distributed both to our entire media list and to about 700 health policy makers. The media have received this publication quite enthusiastically. Several of our issues have been the subject of articles in major media, including a piece in the New York Times by Erica Goode that highlighted each of the Facts of Life issue topics over the past year.

Integrate this view into policy and practice: Since its founding, the Center has worked to better understand the reasons for the gap between research findings and their translation into effective health care policy and practice to improve the quality and quantity of evidence-based interventions available to consumers. Several initiatives are underway to facilitate the acceptance and use of the expanded view of health into health care policy and practice.

The Center has determined that the most effective way to achieve its goals is to work with existing organizations and networks to achieve its goals. Ultimately, the most powerful forces in integrating the expanded view will be allies within the health care establishment who have the respect of their peers and constituents. Therefore, many of the Center's programs target audiences of such stakeholders as health care decision-makers, institutional purchasers of health care, consumer advocates, and biomedical clinicians and researchers.

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