Center for Population Behavioral Health

The new Center for Population Behavioral Health’s (CPBH) mission is to advance theory-driven, interdisciplinary, and translational research in four key thematic areas: healthy aging, health equity, health policy, and health technology with the central aim of improving population health. In the area of healthy aging, Center research will increasingly use real-time data collection (e.g., phone survey/intervention, wearable device) to provide the “right treatment, to the right person, at the right time.” In the area of health equity, Center projects examine social determinants of health, and how multi-level (e.g., structural, community-level, individual-level) interventions are often needed to observe improvements in most health outcomes. In the area of health policy, Center activities evaluate and address the impacts of health policy at local, national, and international levels. In the area of health technology, the Center plays a key role in advancing data science and health technology to support integrated, personalized behavioral healthcare that scales to the population level.

CPBH’s primary goal is to expand the Institute for Health’s (IFH) behavioral health research infrastructure to support real-time, remote data collection, and integration of diverse data types (e.g., wearable device, -omics, electronic health record). Expansion of this research infrastructure will enable cutting-edge assessment and clinical trials methods that can be scaled to the population-level, and align with a precision medicine approach to population health.

Combined with state-of-the-science analytic approaches to “big data”, IFH’s team of behavioral health researchers at the CPBH, together with CPBH’s partners with Rutgers Schools (e.g., Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, School of Public Health, School of Arts and Sciences), Rutgers Health Systems, and the community will drive discoveries that shape national and global policy.

CPBH is actively recruiting new faculty whose interests and talents align with the Center’s mission.