The scientific case for resistance exercise in this population is substantial. Cancer and its treatments strip away lean mass and muscular strength while fat mass and frailty risk climb, and low muscle mass after treatment is linked to worse clinical outcomes. Structured strength training has been associated in prior work with reduced anxiety and fatigue, better sleep, improved physical function, higher self-esteem, greater strength capacity, and a lower risk of falls. Emerging data even suggest that more muscle-strengthening activity may be tied to reduced cancer mortality and recurrence. That is why the American College of Sports Medicine recommends that survivors perform full-body muscle-strengthening activity at least two days per week, a threshold only 19.2 percent of survivors report reaching, compared with roughly 31 percent of women and 40 percent of men without a cancer history.

To capture what survivors actually want, the researchers recruited participants from Northwestern Medicine electronic medical records, sampling in proportions similar to the U.S. survivor population by cancer type and age. Eligible participants were adults at least 18 years old with non-metastatic cancer, no more than five years since diagnosis, at least three months past the end of primary treatment, with internet access and English literacy. Of 759 people who consented, 556 provided complete data on the intervention preferences questionnaire. The average participant was 56.5 years old, 53.6 percent were female, and the most common diagnoses were breast, prostate, lung, colon, and endometrial cancers. Notably, 99.1 percent owned a smartphone, a detail that matters for the technology-supported programs the team had in mind.

Activity levels were measured with validated instruments. The short form of the Muscle-Strengthening Exercise Questionnaire captured frequency, duration, intensity, and the types of resistance work performed, with a test-retest reliability ranging from 0.76 to 0.91. A modified Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire estimated weekly minutes of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic activity. In this sample, participants averaged 1.7 days per week of strength work for about 20 minutes per session and 174 minutes of weekly aerobic activity. About a third, 33.6 percent, met both the strength and aerobic guidelines, while 34.7 percent met neither, and 45.3 percent reported no muscle-strengthening activity at all. The sample was more active than population-based estimates, a limitation the authors acknowledge, since people drawn to a study about exercise are plausibly more active to begin with.

The preference data paint a detailed portrait of an ideal program. Participants wanted medium-intensity sessions, 70.3 percent favoring that level, mixing light weights with high repetitions and heavier loads with lower repetitions. Nearly half were willing to train three to four days per week for 20 to 39 minutes, and 68.7 percent preferred one longer daily session over several shorter ones. Free weights were the most popular modality at 65.3 percent, followed by combinations of free weights and resistance bands, yoga, resistance bands alone, and balance exercises. On timing, the highest endorsement, 92.6 percent, went to starting a program six months to one year after treatment, though more than 70 percent expressed interest at every point along the cancer care continuum.

Technology figured prominently in the results. Almost half of participants, 47.7 percent, preferred a hybrid intervention combining in-person and technology-supported elements, while the remainder split between fully in-person and fully remote formats. For digital delivery, on-demand video was the top choice at 47.8 percent, with a live-plus-on-demand combination close behind. Wearable devices such as fitness trackers were the most favored way to receive feedback on progress, and 57.7 percent wanted feedback on exercise form. Interest in commercially available connected strength equipment was surprisingly high: 65.1 percent were willing to try Tonal, 58.1 percent Peloton, and 55.8 percent Tempo. More than 94 percent said they would use a fitness app if given free access, and 35.8 percent were already using one. Willingness to pay, however, was modest, with 82.4 percent capping spending at zero to fifty dollars per month.

Regression analyses revealed that preferences were not uniform across the population. Women rated one-on-one and live group videoconference sessions, text messages, and emails as more helpful than men did. White participants and non-Hispanic participants generally rated in-person group sessions, activity trackers, electronic health record integration, and buddy systems as less helpful than their counterparts did. Older age predicted lower enthusiasm for nearly every digital feature, including apps, videos, trackers, and smart equipment. Higher income was associated with lower ratings of social networking integration and personalized messaging, while participants with lower household income valued those features more. Treatment history also mattered: surgery recipients rated one-on-one in-person sessions and smart equipment more favorably, and those who had radiation valued smart equipment and program buddies more than those who had not.

The qualitative arm added depth. Thirty participants, randomly selected and stratified so that half met the strength guidelines, completed semi-structured interviews lasting 20 to 45 minutes over Zoom. Transcripts were coded iteratively by multiple team members using consensus review in Dedoose, yielding five themes. Participants believed strength training could restore pre-diagnosis functioning and prevent further decline; they described multilevel barriers including motivation, unfamiliarity with equipment and technique, physical health issues, time, gym access, and cost; prior experience shaped what they were willing to try; they craved support and accountability, particularly from peers who understood the cancer experience; and they demanded flexible, convenient, personalized programming with clear instruction on modifications and progression to avoid overexertion and injury.

Several findings distinguish strength training from general aerobic exercise preferences documented in earlier studies. While most prior preference research found survivors favor unsupervised, home-based activity, roughly half of this sample wanted some supervision, most often from an exercise specialist in person, and about half wanted instruction somewhere other than home, such as a fitness club or cancer center. Nearly 90 percent wanted some form of one-on-one coaching. The authors interpret this as evidence that resistance exercise, perceived as more complex and equipment-dependent than walking or running, may require more guidance to feel safe and feasible, especially for survivors with comorbid conditions worried about injury.

The study has limits worth noting. Recruitment came from a single academic medical center, the sample was highly educated, and although 38 percent of participants were non-White or Hispanic, consistent with national figures, the findings may not generalize to community settings or socioeconomically disadvantaged survivors. Self-reported activity measures carry misclassification risk, and the survey presented no visuals or prototypes, which may have affected how participants interpreted questions. Still, the central message is clear and actionable: survivors across activity levels want strength-training interventions that are accessible, encouraging, flexible, and tailored to their circumstances, and the wide variability in feature preferences argues for involving survivors directly in designing and testing programs. Only one intervention to date has incorporated connected strength equipment with survivors, so the space for innovation, from hybrid coaching models to app-based form feedback, remains wide open. Future work, the authors conclude, must determine which features are truly feasible, engaging, and cost-effective for raising adherence and improving health outcomes in this growing population, projected to exceed 22 million Americans within the next decade.

Subject of Research: Cancer survivors' interests and preferences for muscle-strengthening activity interventions

Article Title: Cancer survivors’ interests and preferences for muscle-strengthening activity interventions

Article References: Pincever, J., Frey, J., Solk, P., Reading, J. M., Wang, S., Freeman, H., Wolter, M., Hickey, B., Wang, L., Webb, F., Walker, F. M., Desai, R., & Phillips, S. M. (2026). Cancer survivors’ interests and preferences for muscle-strengthening activity interventions. Supportive Care in Cancer, 34(11), Article 1078. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-026-11312-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00520-026-11312-7

Keywords: cancer survivors, muscle-strengthening activity, resistance training, exercise preferences, survivorship, physical activity guidelines, technology-supported interventions, mixed methods, Supportive Care in Cancer, Northwestern University, behavioral medicine, rehabilitation

The research, led by Sasha Aronson and Margaret H. Bublitz of Brown University and their colleagues, set out to answer a deceptively simple question: does the social support a pregnant woman perceives bear any relationship to her actual, measured blood pressure? To find out, the team recruited 150 pregnant individuals who were less than 20 weeks into gestation and already considered at elevated risk for developing hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Rather than relying on the single readings taken during a routine prenatal visit, the researchers used 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, a technique that captures blood pressure repeatedly throughout a full day and night as participants go about their ordinary lives.

Ambulatory monitoring matters because blood pressure is not a fixed number. It rises and falls with activity, sleep, stress, and time of day, and clinical guidelines have long recognized that patterns captured over 24 hours predict pregnancy complications better than isolated office measurements. In this study, each participant wore a monitor that recorded systolic pressure, the peak force produced when the heart contracts, and diastolic pressure, the resting pressure between beats, across daytime hours, nighttime hours, and the entire 24-hour cycle. This gave the researchers a rich, physiologically meaningful portrait of each woman’s cardiovascular state during early and mid-pregnancy, well before hypertensive disorders typically declare themselves.

To measure social support, the team used the Prenatal Social Support Instrument – Revised, a validated questionnaire developed for pregnant populations. Crucially, the instrument assesses perceived support, meaning how satisfied women feel with the emotional and practical help available to them, rather than simply counting how many friends or relatives they have. Perceived support is considered the psychologically potent ingredient in the social support literature: decades of research suggest that what protects health is not the mere existence of a social network, but the confidence that the network will respond when needed.

The results were striking in their consistency. Across the linear regression models the researchers employed, higher satisfaction with overall social support was associated with lower blood pressure on multiple ambulatory measures. Women who reported greater perceived support showed significantly lower 24-hour diastolic blood pressure, with each unit increase in support corresponding to a decrease of roughly a third of a millimeter of mercury. The associations extended to daytime systolic blood pressure, daytime diastolic blood pressure, and nighttime diastolic blood pressure, with the strongest coefficient observed for daytime diastolic pressure. In other words, the link between feeling supported and lower cardiovascular load was not confined to a single measurement window; it appeared throughout the day and persisted into the night.

From a biological standpoint, these findings fit neatly into what scientists know about how social relationships get under the skin. Perceived support is thought to buffer the body’s stress response, damping activity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the hormonal system that mobilizes cortisol during psychological strain. When support is low, everyday stressors are processed with less hormonal restraint, promoting sympathetic nervous system activation, vasoconstriction, and sustained elevations in blood pressure. Prior research outside of pregnancy has documented exactly this pattern: meta-analytic evidence shows that people who perceive more support exhibit lower ambulatory blood pressure during daily life, and systematic reviews have linked stronger support to healthier nocturnal blood pressure dipping, the nighttime decline widely regarded as cardioprotective. The new study extends this evidence into a population whose cardiovascular system is working under the extraordinary demands of gestation.

Pregnancy, in this sense, is a uniquely sensitive window. Blood volume rises steeply, vascular function is remodeled, and the endothelium, the inner lining of blood vessels, must adapt to perfuse both mother and placenta. When that adaptation falters, hypertensive disorders emerge, and their consequences can be severe: hypertensive disorders of pregnancy contribute substantially to maternal morbidity and mortality and are associated with elevated risks of premature cardiovascular disease later in the mother’s life, as well as early-onset cardiovascular risk in her offspring. Studies have also shown that psychosocial factors such as depression, anxiety, and chronic stress are associated with increased risk of these disorders, while social support has been tied to better pregnancy outcomes ranging from lower postpartum depression to reduced preterm birth in meta-analytic work. What remained unexplored until now was whether support is connected to the most fundamental physiological marker of risk, blood pressure itself, in women already identified as vulnerable.

The researchers are careful about interpretation. Because the study is observational, it cannot prove that low social support raises blood pressure; it is possible that women with higher blood pressure perceive their relationships more negatively, or that unmeasured factors such as socioeconomic strain shape both. Yet the plausibility of a causal pathway is strengthened by the specificity of the ambulatory measures and by converging evidence from other fields, including randomized trials in general hypertension care showing that adding social support components to remote blood pressure monitoring can improve outcomes. The authors argue that if the association proves causal, psychosocial interventions designed to cultivate support, from group prenatal care to partner involvement programs to phone-based mindfulness training currently under investigation, could become meaningful tools for protecting the cardiovascular health of pregnant women.

The implications reach beyond the clinic. Public health data show that hypertensive disorders in pregnancy have been rising steadily for decades, that their burden falls unevenly across racial and socioeconomic groups, and that maternal mortality linked to hypertension remains a persistent crisis. Support networks, doulas, community programs, and even online communities have all been studied as buffers, and the new findings give those efforts a concrete physiological target: keeping antenatal blood pressure lower during the critical first half of pregnancy. For a condition long managed primarily through monitoring and medication after the fact, the possibility that something as human and modifiable as perceived support could shift early cardiovascular trajectories is a finding worth amplifying. Future research, the authors note, should test whether interventions that genuinely increase a pregnant woman’s sense of being supported can translate these cross-sectional associations into lower blood pressure, fewer hypertensive complications, and healthier pregnancies for the women and families who need it most.

Subject of Research: The relationship between perceived social support and 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure in pregnant women at risk for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

Article Title: Perceived social support and antenatal blood pressure in pregnant women at risk for hypertensive disorders

Article References: Aronson, S., Salmoirago-Blotcher, E., Bourjeily, G., Ayala, N. K., Nugent, N. R., Desmarattes, A. N., & Bublitz, M. H. (2026). Perceived social support and antenatal blood pressure in pregnant women at risk for hypertensive disorders. Journal of Behavioral Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-026-00713-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10865-026-00713-y

Keywords: pregnancy, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, preeclampsia, social support, blood pressure, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, maternal cardiovascular health, psychosocial stress, prenatal care, behavioral medicine, diastolic blood pressure, perceived support

The scope of the problem the issue addresses is considerable. Veterans experience elevated rates of a cluster of mental and behavioral health conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, sleep disturbances, substance use disorders, and heightened suicide risk. Alongside these well-recognized burdens sit more conventional chronic diseases that appear at higher rates in veteran populations than among civilian peers: asthma, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes mellitus, and rheumatoid arthritis. National surveillance data cited by the editors indicate that veterans are more likely than nonveterans to live with multiple chronic conditions simultaneously, a pattern that turns routine clinical management into a complex balancing act involving behavioral, pharmacological, and social interventions.

Suicide prevention emerges as one of the most urgent threads running through the issue. Meta-analytic work on military and veteran populations has catalogued an extensive set of risk factors for suicidal ideation, attempts, and death, and the new studies extend that picture in a strikingly relational direction. One investigation of post-9/11 veterans found that parental well-being during the transition from military service to civilian life predicted veterans’ own suicidal ideation, suggesting that family-level variables belong alongside individual clinical factors in suicide risk assessment. Another study evaluated problem-solving therapy delivered within the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Suicide Prevention 2.0 clinical telehealth program, testing whether a structured cognitive intervention can reduce suicide-related outcomes when delivered remotely. Together, these contributions illustrate a shift in the field toward combining precision in risk prediction with scalable, technology-enabled delivery of care.

The military-to-civilian transition itself is treated as a critical behavioral window. Longitudinal research has documented the emergence of probable posttraumatic stress disorder among US veterans across the transition period, and the special issue includes an analysis of young adult veterans’ readjustment patterns following discharge, identifying predictors that could guide early intervention before problems consolidate into chronic conditions. A parallel qualitative and epidemiological literature on service members with service-connected disabilities shows that the transition is not a single event but an extended process shaped by employment, housing, social networks, and access to health care. For behavioral medicine, the implication is that prevention efforts timed to the months surrounding separation from service may yield disproportionate returns, a conclusion that several of the issue’s authors argue should reshape how screening and outreach are organized.

Chronic pain receives sustained attention throughout the collection, reflecting its status as one of the most common and disabling conditions in veteran care. One study documented that co-occurring chronic pain and PTSD is widespread among US military veterans and is associated with worse functioning, and the issue builds directly on that foundation with new work on women veterans, whose pain experiences are analyzed through mixed methods that capture the relational demands—caregiving, family obligations, and social expectations—that shape how pain is lived and managed. Another pair of studies followed combat veterans over time, finding that physical and emotional distress tolerance predict pain intensity and pain-related disability, and that gender, headache frequency, and headache intensity forecast psychosocial functioning and quality of life. A further analysis linked neuropathic and nociplastic pain conditions to health behaviors and mental health in veterans with type 2 diabetes, underscoring how pain, metabolic disease, and psychological distress intertwine.

Because pain and trauma so often co-occur, the issue also tackles the clinical question of how to treat both at once. A Delphi study—a structured consensus method in which expert panels iterate toward agreement—offers guidance for the simultaneous treatment of chronic pain and PTSD, an area where clinicians have historically lacked clear protocols. On the trauma side, a separate trial examined the process of prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD, finding that graduated exposure to traumatic events decreased distress during treatment, evidence that careful pacing of exposure can make one of the most effective available psychotherapies more tolerable without blunting its benefits. Complementing these, a national sample study identified the social determinants of health—housing stability, transportation, income, and social support among them—that predict whether veterans ever initiate evidence-based psychotherapy for PTSD in the first place, a reminder that even the best treatments fail when patients cannot reach them.

Sleep and substance use form a third cluster of studies with strong technical dimensions. The SEDATIVE trial tested a novel parallel-delivery model in which clinical pharmacists led deprescribing of sleep medications while patients simultaneously received clinician-supervised asynchronous cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, an arrangement designed to reduce reliance on sedative-hypnotics whose long-term risks are increasingly recognized. Substance use research in the issue spans both epidemiology and intervention: national data show ongoing trends in substance use disorder diagnoses among veterans across a decade, contingency management—the systematic reinforcement of drug-free specimens—has been implemented at scale across the VA with measurable effects on attendance and substance use outcomes, and qualitative work in highly rural-serving VA hospitals documents veterans’ own views on alcohol use, their experiences of alcohol withdrawal syndrome treatment, and the pathways into subsequent alcohol use disorder care. A study of US Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers found that motherhood status exerted a protective effect on alcohol use relative to civilian women, complicating simple narratives about military service and drinking.

Digital health and telehealth innovations constitute perhaps the most forward-looking portion of the issue. A systematic review evaluated digital interventions targeting the impact of stress on stress-related mental health outcomes in military personnel and veterans, aggregating evidence across a rapidly proliferating landscape of apps and web-based programs. Implementation studies examined outcomes for virtual mental health care delivered to rural Native veterans, a population for whom geographic isolation, cultural factors, and historical mistrust of mainstream institutions create layered barriers to care. Qualitative research explored veterans’ needs and perceptions regarding telemental healthcare among veterans with spinal cord injuries, a group whose mobility limitations make remote care especially consequential. Additional work on tobacco and nicotine cessation assessed the implications for Area Health Education Centers, and a pilot study described the development, implementation, and acceptability of an acceptance and commitment therapy-based intervention aimed at promoting brain health in older veterans, extending behavioral medicine into the realm of cognitive aging.

Peer support and whole-health models round out the collection’s care-innovation themes. A mixed methods two-phase pilot study evaluated peer support for whole health, testing whether veterans trained as peers can help fellow veterans engage with self-management, prevention, and wellness-oriented goals. This work connects to the VA’s broader Whole Health System, which has integrated complementary and integrative health approaches into conventional care and represents one of the largest experiments in person-centered medicine anywhere in American health care. The editors place these innovations in a long historical arc: behavioral principles entered federal veteran care as early as the 1950s, when psychologists developed programs in tuberculosis hospitals serving veterans, and the field has since grown into a discipline that spans psychotherapy, health behavior change, technology-mediated care, and systems engineering.

What unifies the twenty articles, the editors argue, is a shared recognition that improving veterans’ health requires acting simultaneously at multiple levels. Addressing social and structural determinants of health, expanding access to evidence-based interventions, and deploying innovative models of care—telehealth, digital therapeutics, peer support, pharmacist-led deprescribing, and implementation science methods that systematically close the gap between what is known and what is delivered—are presented not as alternatives but as complementary strategies. The special issue’s call for papers had explicitly invited work on resilience, posttraumatic growth, and strengths-based research alongside deficit-focused studies, and the resulting collection reflects that balance, treating veterans not merely as carriers of risk but as people whose families, communities, and life courses shape and are shaped by their health. For a population whose service produces obligations that extend across generations, the editors conclude, behavioral medicine is positioned to be both the science of that burden and the source of its relief.

Subject of Research: Behavioral medicine research on the mental and physical health of military veterans

Article Title: Military veterans and behavioral medicine: introduction to the special issue

Article References: Military veterans and behavioral medicine: introduction to the special issue. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-026-00706-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10865-026-00706-x

Keywords: military veterans, behavioral medicine, PTSD, suicide prevention, chronic pain, telehealth, digital therapeutics, peer support, implementation science, military-to-civilian transition, chronic disease self-management, sleep disorders