Washington, DC - Scouring the Web to learn new ways to instill better health habits? Trying to find the best health app to lose weight or reduce stress? Or maybe you’re posting on Twitter and Facebook to try to build a supportive community for your healthy goals. Online and mobile health interventions are getting easier to come by but psychologists say that while social media and Internet-based treatment programs can be beneficial, there is a need for rigorous methods to help guide the development and evaluation of these programs and apps.

In a special issue of Health Psychology®, published this month, psychology practitioners and researchers discuss a range of health behaviors targeted by online and mobile platforms, including smoking cessation, substance abuse, physical activity, tanning, sleep, stress management and medication adherence.

“Health care costs continue to escalate,” said issue co-editor Belinda Borrelli, PhD, of Boston University. “But with increased access to smartphones and the Internet, there is an unprecedented opportunity to use these less expensive technologies to prevent, assess and treat health behaviors across a wide segment of the population never before thought imaginable.”

Overall, the online-only special issue covers a range of targeted health behaviors across a variety of populations (depressed patients, women at risk for breast cancer, obese adults, young adults, people with HIV) using a mix of platforms (Internet-based, text messaging, Twitter, gaming).

“It is our hope that the ‘bench to bookshelf’ trajectory that has plagued the majority of clinical research and treatment studies will not continue with this new wave of eHealth and mHealth efforts,” said co-editor Lee Ritterband, PhD, of the University of Virginia.