Behavioural & implementation research

The behavioural and implementation research hub, or behavioural science or besci hub for short, undertakes timely, demand-driven behavioural and implementation research. This includes both new besci studies undertaken rapidly when ‘windows’ of opportunity open and rapid contextualized syntheses of what has been learned from past besci studies.

Please email Justin Presseau at jpresseau@ohri.ca with requests for support or questions about the hub.

The besci hub has a four-year history of collaboration with the evidence-synthesis hub, as reflected in the following illustrative outputs:

• strategies to build, maintain or repair public trust in health contexts: a rapid evidence synthesis of randomized and quasi-experimental studies (evidence synthesis – coming in 2026-09)
• behavioural science-informed approaches to mitigate health-related misinformation (collaborative living evidence synthesis – published in 2026-02)
• COVID-19 vaccine mandates and their relationship with vaccination intention, psychological reactance, and trust: a rapid behavioural evidence synthesis (evidence synthesis – published in 2024-03)
• effectiveness of interventions for promoting adherence to public health and social measures for preventing COVID-19 and other respiratory infections in non-health care community-based settings (evidence synthesis – published 2023-03).
  

This hub powerfully complements several existing besci networks in Canada, namely:

• a pandemics-focused besci network – an extension of the iCARE Platform – led by Kim Lavoie and Simon Bacon at the Université du Québec à Montréal, which has less of a timely, demand-driven evidence-support orientation and a tightly focused scope on pandemics and other health emergencies
• a methods-focused besci network – the Canadian Behavioural Interventions and Trials Network – led by Simon Bacon and co-led by Justin Presseau (lead of our besci hub), which doesn’t have a timely, demand-side evidence-support orientation.