Health behaviour: sexually transmitted infection prevention behaviour, sun protection behaviour, medication non-adherence, and health professional behaviour

The current special issue of Psychology & Health follows on from similar special issues published in 2017 (Conner & Norman, 2017) and 2019 (Conner & Norman, 2019) in focusing on an important topic for contemporary health psychology; namely, health behaviour. The study of health behaviours in terms of their definition, measurement, prevalence, determinants and effectiveness of interventions has been and remains an important focus in health psychology. These special issues of Psychology & Health bring together state-of-the-art reviews on key health behaviours authored by experts in the field. Each review aims to provide an overview of what is currently known about a specific health behaviour in relation to definitions, impacts on health, prevalence in different groups, key determinants, and effectiveness of interventions, as well as providing future directions for research. As we previously argued (Conner & Norman, 2017, 2019), such state-of-the-art reviews can both be useful sources of information and stimulate new research and so be useful to a broad range of readers, from those with little knowledge of the area to those actively involved with research on these health behaviours. These reviews also highlight what is unique about specific health behaviours, knowledge that can be lost in more general reviews. The three special issues of Psychology & Health provide comprehensive reviews of a broad range of important health behaviours and, as such, represent a useful resource for those working on each health behaviour or interested in learning about work on each health behaviour (Table 1). The previous two special issues focused on healthy diet, physical activity, binge drinking, smoking, opioid use and misuse, cancer screening, and blood and organ donation. The current special issue includes reviews on sexually transmitted infection prevention behaviours (De Wit et al., 2022), sun protection behaviours (Julian et al.,2023), medication non-adherence (Horne et al., 2022), and health professional behaviours (Patey et al., 2022). The behaviours covered across the three special issues are a regular focus of attention for articles published in Psychology & Health. For example, recent issues of Psychology & Health have seen papers focusing on the health behaviours covered in the current special issues (sexual behaviours: Brasileiro et al., 2021; sun protection: Bowers et al., 2022; medication adherence: Harvey et al., 2022; health professional behaviours: Hobby et al., 2022) as well as health behaviours that appeared in the earlier special issues on this topic (physical activity/sedentary behaviour: Dillon et al., 2022; Kalajas-Tilga et al., 2022; Vogel et al., 2022; smoking: Grogan et al., 2022; Sorgen et al., 2022; Schwaninger et al., 2022; screening: Stuart & D’Lima, 2022; alcohol use: Montanaro & Magnan, 2022).