title: Treatment adherence and illness self-management: introduction to the special issue.
abstract: The current issue is devoted broadly to research on treatment adherence and chronic illness self-management behavior. As the prevalence of chronic illness increases, the pervasive problem of treatment nonadherence is increasingly viewed as having a major impact on treatment outcomes, public health and healthcare costs, making this issue particularly timely. Sixteen articles spanning an array of topics are presented; articles include empirical studies, statistical simulations, systematic reviews, and theoretical commentaries. Studies conducted with diverse patient populations (e.g., chronic headache, diabetes, end-stage renal disease, HIV, hypertension, severe obesity), samples (e.g., adolescents, ethnic/racial minorities, low-income adults, parents, spousal dyads), and designs (e.g., cross-sectional, longitudinal assessment, randomized controlled trial), are represented. This issue highlights psychosocial factors associated with nonadherence, promising interventions to promote adherence, and state-of-the art methods for the study of illness self-management. We hope these articles engender even more high quality, methodologically rigorous research in this important subfield of behavioral medicine.
authors.affiliation: VA Iowa City Healthcare System, Iowa City, IA, USA. matthew-howren@uiowa.edu.|Department of Psychology, The University of Iowa, 11 Seashore Hall East, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA. matthew-howren@uiowa.edu.
authors.forename: M Bryant
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Howren
authors.affiliation: Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, USA.|Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology and Population Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Jeffrey S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Gonzalez
mesh_terms: D001524:Behavioral Medicine / Q000639:trends*; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D006801:Humans; D010349:Patient Compliance / Q000523:psychology*; D012648:Self Care
keywords: Behavioral medicine; Health psychology; Illness self-management; Special issue; Treatment adherence