IBTN Leadership

Executive Committee

The IBTN Executive Committee currently serves at the helm of the IBTN. Its members are all experts in their own right in various subfields of behavioural science. They contribute actively to the IBTN’s current projects, including the organization of the annual conference and the new SPOR initiative through which the IBTN Summer School is offered.

Interested in joining our group? Contact us

Simon L. Bacon, PhD (founding member and co-lead)

Contact Dr. Bacon at simon.bacon@concordia.ca.

Dr. Bacon’s biography

Dr. Simon Bacon, co-Director of the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre, CIHR SPOR Chair in Innovative, Patient-Oriented, Behavioural Clinical Trials, and FRQS Co-Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Digital Health for Health Behaviour Change, has had extensive training in the delivery of behavioural randomised controlled trials and has been a PI and co-I on 14 different studies involving behavioural interventions, including exercise, weight management, stress management, and motivational interviewing. In addition, he has several years in generating national recommendations through his work with the Canadian Hypertension Education Program (CHEP: he has been a member of the last 5 recommendation panels), where he is currently the chair of the lifestyles sub-committee. Finally, Dr. Bacon has organised several knowledge translation events, including Café Scientifiques, where he has brought a number of different stakeholders together to discuss key topics and issues, for example, trying to create a common dialogue between researchers and the media to improve health innovation reporting.

Kim Lavoie, PhD, FCPA, FABMR (founding member and co-lead)

Contact Dr. Lavoie at lavoie.kim@uqam.ca

Dr. Lavoie’s biography

Dr. Kim Lavoie is co-Director of the MBMC, holds the Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Medicine, and is a researcher in the Chronic Disease Research Division at Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal. She is a Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at UQAM and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at University of Montreal. She is internationally recognized for her research on the impact of psychological and behavioural factors on the development and progression of cardiovascular and lung diseases, and the impact of behavioral interventions, e.g., motivational communication, exercise, and behavioural weight loss, on key health behaviours and outcomes in chronic lung disease. She is also the Chair of the Canadian Network for Health Behaviour Change and Promotion (CAN-Change) and an active member of the CHEP recommendation panel (Adherence Subcommittee). Finally, she is an internationally recognized expert in motivational communication; over 15,000 health professionals across Canada, the US, Europe (France, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, Estonia, the UK), India and Australia/New Zealand have attended her professional training workshops. She currently holds multiple grants in the area of motivational communication training and efficacy for behaviour change in chronic disease. Dr. Lavoie is a founding member of the IBTN.

Grégory Ninot, PhD (founding member and co-lead)

Contact Dr. Ninot at gregory.ninot@umontpellier.fr

Dr. Ninot’s biography

Dr. Grégory Ninot is a Professor at the University of Montpellier (France). He leads the CEPS Platform, which is dedicated to improving the methodology of behavioral and non-pharmalogical trials. Dr. Ninot plays a critical coordination role in the development of the quality of these studies in Europe. He is involved in several clinical trials and meta-analyses testing the efficacy of exercise programs, e-health solutions, psychotherapy or disease management education methods mainly in patients with respiratory disease or cancer. He has published over one hundred articles and more than a dozen books on the subject. He writes a blog to raise public awareness of randomized controlled trials, with the ultimate goal of improving care for chronic disease patients.

Jean Bourbeau, MD (founding member)

  • Respirologist and Professor in the departments of Medicine and Epidemiology & Biostatistics at McGill University
  • Director of the McConnell Centre of Innovative Medicine (CIM) of the Research Institute of the MUHC (RIMUHC)
  • Director of the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Unit at the Montreal Chest Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC).

Contact Dr. Bourbeau at jean.bourbeau@mcgill.ca

Dr. Bourbeau’s biography

Dr. Jean Bourbeau, Respirologist and Professor in the departments of Medicine and Epidemiology & Biostatistics at McGill University, is the director of the McConnell Centre of Innovative Medicine (CIM) of the Research Institute of the MUHC (RIMUHC) and the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Unit at the Montreal Chest Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). His areas of research and expertise are in COPD, rehabilitation, and disease self-management. He has a particular interest in behavioural Randomized Clinical Trials, including five noteworthy major multicentre RCTs of non-pharmacological interventions building evidence based for use in clinical practice (self-management COPD/FRSQ, home rehabilitation/CIHR, COMET/Airliquid, PHYSACTO/BI, and PROPEL/NHLBI). His work has not only had impact in research but also in clinical practice and the public domain (e.g., Living Well with COPD). In addition, Dr. Bourbeau chairs the COPD axis of the Health Respiratory Network of the FRQS, and serves on the board of the CTS of which he was past president. He is on the scientific committee of the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) and leading/co-leading guidelines/position statements in COPD (CTS, Chest, ATS/ERS, and GOLD). Through his leadership Dr. Bourbeau will be able provide additional knowledge translation opportunities to advance the work of the IBTNetwork.

Susan Czajkowski, PhD (founding member)

Contact Dr. Czajkowski at susan.czajkowski@nih.gov

Dr. Czajkowski’s biography

Dr. Susan Czajkowski, Chief of the Health Behaviors Research Branch (HBRB) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), is an expert on psychosocial and behavioral risk factors for disease, including the role of social support and depression in disease risk and recovery; the development and testing of interventions for behavioral risk factors such as obesity, physical inactivity, adverse diets, and non-adherence to medical regimens; and the assessment of health-related quality of life and psychosocial functioning in patients with chronic diseases. She has managed several research initiatives involving improvement of adherence to lifestyle and medical therapies in patient populations, including minority patients and the medically underserved and was project officer for the Enhancing Recovery in Coronary Heart Disease (ENRICHD) Patients Study, the largest multicenter clinical trial to evaluate the effects of treating depression and low social support in heart attack patients. As lead project officer for the NIH-funded Obesity-Related Behavioral Intervention Trials (ORBIT) network, Dr. Czajkowski and Dr. Lynda Powell led the development of the ORBIT model for preventing and treating chronic diseases. Dr. Czajkowski is a fellow in the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and recently served as President of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.

Kenneth Freedland, PhD (founding member)

Contact Dr. Freedland at freedlak@wustl.edu

Dr. Freedland’s biography

Dr. Kenneth Freedland, Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is an expert in the behavioural treatment of depression and related problems in patients with heart disease and other chronic illnesses. He has been the principal investigator, a co-investigator, or a DSMB member on multiple trials and has served on both the single-site and multicenter clinical trial review committees for the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. He has also served on the faculty of the annual NIH Summer Institute on Randomized Behavioral Clinical Trials since 2007 and has been the Program Director of the Summer Institute since 2020. He is the author of multiple articles and book chapters on behavioural trial methodology. His methodological interests include the selection and design of comparators for behavioural trials, the role and design of pilot studies in behavioural intervention research, and methods for making and tracking progress towards better health outcomes.

Susan Michie, PhD (founding member)

Contact Dr. Michie at s.michie@ucl.ac.uk

Dr. Michie’s biography

Dr. Susan Michie is Professor of Health Psychology at University College London (UCL) and Director of its Centre for Behaviour Change and its Health Psychology Research Group. She is Principal Investigator of the Human Behaviour-Change Project. She is a chartered clinical and health psychologist, whose research focuses on behaviour change in relation to health: how to understand it theoretically and apply theory to intervention development and evaluation, and to evidence synthesis. This is conducted in the domains of risky and preventive behaviours amongst the general population (e.g. smoking, alcohol use, preparing for pandemic flu), managing illness (e.g. medication adherence), and professional practice and implementation (e.g. hand-hygiene amongst hospital staff). Her work includes developing and evaluating digital interventions and investigating the fidelity of delivery of interventions. Her research develops methods to advance the study of behaviour change, including frameworks such as the Behaviour Change Wheel and the Theoretical Domains Framework, and specifying intervention content using taxonomies of behaviour change techniques (BCT Taxonomy v1). Two relevant books she has authored are The Behaviour Change Wheel Guide to Designing Interventions and The ABC of Behaviour Change Theories.

Paul Montgomery, PhD (founding member)

Contact Dr. Montgomery at p.x.montgomery@bham.ac.uk

Dr. Montgomery’s biography

Dr. Paul Montgomery is Professor of Social Interventions at the University of Birmingham (UK) and leads on the development of the CONSORT-SPI, a reporting guideline for randomised trials of complex psychological and social interventions. His research focuses on improving our understanding of what interventions are effective in tackling complex psychological, social, and health problems and GRADE- CI a tool to assess a body of evidence for systematic reviews. His academic work spans a range of issues, from chronic sleep problems to HIV/AIDS, and integrates the use of several high-quality methodological approaches, many of which have not been traditionally applied in the social sciences. This work falls under three broad categories: (1) Methodology of Psycho-Social Intervention, (2) Nutrition, and (3) Behavioural Interventions. This work has been widely published and he has received funding from multiple sources. A social worker by training, Paul maintains a clinical practice on top of his academic work, where he specialises in Brief Intervention and Cognitive Behavioural techniques for depression, anxiety and insomnia, and treats both adults and adolescents.

Lynda Powell, PhD (founding member)

Contact Dr. Powell at lpowell@rush.edu

Dr. Powell’s biography

Dr. Powell is the Charles J. and Margaret Roberts Professor of Preventive Medicine, Medicine, Behavioral Sciences, and Pharmacology, and is Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. She is internationally recognized as an expert in the design and conduct of behavioral randomized clinical trials. She has been a past Principal Investigator of 5 major randomized behavioral trials, the Principal Investigator of an NHLBI-sponsored P50 center aimed at developing and testing multi-level behavioral treatments to reduce cardiopulmonary disparities, and the Principal Investigator of the Chicago site of the NHLBI-sponsored Obesity-Related Behavioral Intervention Trials (ORBIT) network. The Chicago ORBIT site was aimed at developing a multi-component, multi-level lifestyle treatment to prevent the menopause-related progression of visceral fat in mid-life women. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a $10.7 million multi-site behavioral clinical trial aimed at determining whether a lifestyle intervention can promote a sustained 2-year remission of the metabolic syndrome. She was the Director of the OBSSR-sponsored Workshop “Translating Ideas into Interventions: The Process of Developing Health-Related Behavioral Interventions,” Director of the OBSSR-sponsored Workshop on “Controversies in Behavioral Randomized Clinical Trials,” and participant in the NIH-NCAAM “Workshop on Control Groups.” She is a founding faculty member of the NIH/OBSSR-sponsored Summer Institute for Randomized Clinical Trials Involving Behavioral Interventions (since 1/01), and served as a Co-Director of the Institute (1/08-7/13). In that capacity, she has trained approximately 800 past graduates. She has or currently mentors approximately 65 junior faculty in or outside of her Department in behavioral clinical trial methodology. She has been invited to present on behavioral trial methodology at the annual meetings of the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, American Psychosomatic Society, the Society for Behavioral Medicine, the Society for Clinical Trials, and the International Society for Behavioral Medicine. She was an invited member of the NIH National Advisory Council for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) (2011-2015). She was a Fellow, at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences (2015-2016). She is co-developer of the ORBIT model for behavioral intervention development. Along with her co-authors, Ken Freedland and Peter Kaufmann, she published a book on the unique challenges posed by clinical trials involving behavioral interventions entitled “Behavioral Clinical Trials for Chronic Diseases. Scientific Foundations” (Springer, 2021).

Bonnie Spring, PhD (founding member)

Contact Dr. Spring at bspring@northwestern.edu

Dr. Spring’s biography

Dr. Bonnie Spring, Professor of Preventive Medicine, Psychology, and Psychiatry at Northwestern University and Director of the Center for Behavior and Health of its Institute for Public Health and Medicine, is recognized internationally for her research on interventions to improve risk behaviors for chronic disease. Her research on smoking, physical inactivity, and obesity has been funded continuously since 1976 primarily by grants from the NIH (NHLBI, NIDDK, NCI, NIMH), American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, and Department of Veterans Affairs. She has been PI of a number of clinical trials fostering smoking cessation and reduction of weight gain via pharmacological and behavioral treatments. A NIDA-funded effectiveness trial that delivers her intervention using the nationwide tobacco telephone quit lines is currently ongoing. She was also founding editor and editor-in-chief of Translational Behavioral Medicine: Practice, Policy, Research. She chairs the NIH PRDP standing study section, previously chaired the American Psychological Association’s Board of Scientific Affairs and the American Heart Association’s Health Behavior Change Committee. She is PI of several trials using technology-supported interventions to foster change in multiple diet and activity behaviors or weight loss. Her current trials implement novel research designs adapted from engineering science to optimize and increase the efficiency of behavioral intervention development. Her NIH-funded on-line learning modules on evidence-based practice (www.ebbp.org) and on team science (www.teamscience.net) are freely accessible online.

Molly Byrne, PhD

Contact Dr. Byrne at molly.byrne@nuigalway.ie

Dr. Byrne’s biography

Dr. Molly Byrne is a Professor of Health Psychology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. In 2014 she was awarded a Health Research Board (HRB, Ireland) Research Leadership Award (2014-2019) to establish and direct the Health Behaviour Change Research Group (HBCRG). This group aims to improve population health by developing and promoting an evidence-based behavioural science approach to health behaviour change interventions. The team are interested in developing novel approaches to increase the implementation and impact of behaviour change interventions, with particular interest in participatory approaches to research involving patients and public. The team are currently running a number of intervention development studies, pilot trials of interventions and definitive intervention trials. Studies are focused on areas including: self-management among young adults with Type 1 Diabetes; attendance at structured education programmes for people with Type 2 Diabetes; delivery of sexual counselling within hospital cardiac rehabilitation; interventions to increase physical activity among overweight pregnant women and interventions to promote healthy infant feeding delivered in primary care.

Justin Presseau, PhD

Contact Dr. Presseau at jpresseau@ohri.ca

Dr. Presseau’s biography

Dr. Justin Presseau is a Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (Canada) with a background in health psychology and implementation science, and an Assistant Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health and the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa. He is also the Scientific Lead for knowledge translation at the Ottawa Methods Centre. Dr. Presseau’s research program focuses on behaviour change related to health. His research draws upon behaviour change theories and methods and applies these to understanding and supporting behaviour change in the general public (e.g., physical activity, organ donation registration), patients (e.g., adhering to medication, attending cardiac rehabilitation, attending retinopathy screening), and in the clinical behaviours of healthcare professionals translating research evidence into practice (e.g., prescribing, test ordering, delivering interventions). His research interests focus particularly on developing and evaluating theory-based behaviour change interventions and in understanding the role of habit/automatic behaviour and competing priorities in the process of behaviour change. Dr. Presseau completed his PhD in Psychology at the University of Aberdeen (UK) and has since been awarded early career awards from the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine, the International Society of Behavioral Medicine, and the European Health Psychology Society. Dr. Presseau is an associate editor for journals Implementation Science and Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being.

Tavis Campbell, PhD

  • Professor in the departments of Clinical Psychology and Oncology at the University of Calgary

Contact Dr. Campbell at t.s.campbell@ucalgary.ca

Dr. Campbell’s biography

Dr. Tavis Campbell is a Professor of Clinical Psychology and Oncology at the University of Calgary. He obtained his Ph.D from McGill University and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Duke University Medical Centre. His research interests involve identifying and understanding the bio-behavioral mechanisms involved in the development, progression, and management of chronic diseases, such as atrial fibrillation, cancer and arthritis. Dr. Campbell has published results from several behavior-based RCTs in the areas of cancer, pain, and chronic disease management, including the i-can sleep trial targeting insomnia in cancer survivors. In addition, he is actively involved in Hypertension Canada and is Chair of Care Delivery. Finally, Dr. Campbell is regularly sought out by a variety of healthcare professionals (e.g., physicians, rheumatologists, nurses, dermatologists) to deliver workshops with a focus on motivating health behavior change and improving patient-provider communication.

Founding Members

The founding members of the IBTN were drawn from a variety of areas and countries. These international experts have many years of experience in developing and delivering behavioural trials and a number of them have been involved in some of the largest trials in our field. They pulled together their expertise to create the IBTN and through it hope to improve the quality and quantity of behavioural interventions and trials.

  • Dr. Isabelle Boutron, PhD, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the Université Paris Descartes and researchers at the INSERM U738 isabelle.boutron@htd.aphp.fr
  • Dr. Tim Caulfield, PhD, Canada Research Chair in Health Law, Trudeau Fellow and Professor at the Faculty of Law and School of Public Health and Policy, and Research Director of the University of Alberta Faculty of Law’s Health Law Institute caulfield@ualberta.ca
  • Dr. Karina Davidson, PhD, Professor of Behavioral Medicine in Medicine and Psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and Director of the Center for Behavioral & Cardiovascular Health kd2124@cumc.columbia.edu
  • Dr. Gaston Godin, PhD, Professor Emeritus at Université Laval gaston.godin@fsi.ulaval.ca
  • Dr. David Moher, PhD, Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Methods Centre, Clinical Epidemiology Program, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) dmoher@ohri.ca
  • Dr. Lise Rochaix, PhD, full time member of the executive board of the French national health authority (HAS – Haute Autorité de Santé) and chairs the economics and public health assessment committee (CEESP – Commission d’Evaluation Economique et de Santé Publique) lise.rochaix@psemail.eu
  • Dr. David Secko, PhD, Associate Professor of Journalism at Concordia University david.secko@concordia.ca
  • Dr. Stan Shapiro, PhD, Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University, and a consultant to the Randomized Clinical Trial Unit at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital stan.shapiro@mcgill.ca