Behavioral medicine emerged in the 1970s as a multidisciplinary area of ​​integrating scientific, behavioral, psychosocial, and biomedical knowledge relevant to understanding health and disease, and applying this knowledge to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation. Recent years have seen a tremendous diversity of behavioral medicine, with new sciences (such as genetics and epidemiology in the life cycle) and new technologies (such as neuroscience) that come into play.

This book combines these new developments by providing a compendium of modern methods and applications derived from a wide range of behavioral medicine research and practice. The book is divided into 10 sections dealing with the main areas of behavioral medicine. Each section begins with one or two systematic or conceptual chapters, followed by contributions on substantive topics in this area.

Major health problems such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, HIV / AIDS, and obesity are explored from multiple perspectives. The aim is to introduce behavioral medicine as an integrative system, incorporating diverse methodologies and models that converge on health and well-being..