Our Impact in 2025

As 2025 draws to a close, we’re celebrating a year of growth, collaboration, and impact.

Spotlight on our team

New roles and capacity building

Having secured funding for three new roles to support the continued development of our consultancy, training, teaching, and research activities, we were delighted to appoint Dr Elise Crayton to the first of these posts, focusing on consultancy. In the new year, we will be recruiting for the research post - stay tuned for announcements.

Recognition and progression

• Prof Susan Michie and Prof Robert West were recognised in Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers 2025 list.
• Fabiana Lorencatto was promoted to Professor of Behavioural Sciences and Implementation Sciences.
• Prof Angel Chater delivered her inaugural lecture, 'Transformative Health Psychology and Behaviour Change: Empowering Tomorrow'.
• Dr Amanda Moore was promoted to Senior Research Fellow, reflecting her leadership in co-design and is underscored by her recent NIHR award.
• Catherine Lawrence successfully passed her NIHR-funded PhD, applying the Behaviour Change Wheel to explore how we can improve patient engagement with early physical rehabilitation on critical care.

Education, training and reach

In 2025, we continued to build global capacity in behavioural science through our teaching and training programmes.

• 10 bespoke consultancy and commissioned training projects
• 41 students enrolled in our 2025 MSc in Behaviour Change
• 400 attendees from 35 countries in-person and online at the Behaviour Change Conference
• 636 trainees across our International Training Pogramme

Research reach and visibility

CBC research continued to attract significant attention from academic, policy and practitioner audiences in 2025.

• 7 invited keynote presentations at national and international conferences
• An article published in April, co-authored by Prof Susan Michie - Hertwig R, Michie S, West R, Reicher S. Moving from nudging to boosting: empowering behaviour change to address global challenges. Behavioural Public Policy. 2025;9(4):874-885. doi:10.1017/bpp.2025.9 - has already been viewed 7405 times.
• An article published in August, co-authored by Dr Paulina Schenk & Prof Susan Michie - Schenk, P. M., Michie, S., Johnston, M., & Cornelius, T. (2025). Measuring processes of change in behavioural interventions: Insights gained from linking mechanisms of action to associated measures. British Journal of Health Psychology, 30, e70015 - has already been viewed 1149 times.
• Our online presence also continues to grow, with 3537 new LinkedIn followers, taking our total to 6700 followers

Policy impact

Using data from Overton, we were impressed to see the scale of the global policy impact of one of our most widely used frameworks, the Behaviour Change Wheel. In 2025, the Behaviour Change Wheel was cited in 84 policy documents, across 13 countries, by 28 government sources.

Examples of impact in the UK

Citations in UK policy documents this year included:

• Behavioural Insights for Simpler Recycling in workplaces – Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
• Engagement with Type 2 Diabetes services and self-management – Public Health Wales
• The creation of food waste – Food Standards Agency
• Reducing reoffending evidence synthesis – Ministry of Justice
• Moments of change and travel behaviours – Department for Transport
• Overweight and obesity management – NICE

Examples of impact globally

Citations in international policy documents this year included:

• Australia: Active Choices: A stepped-down program to promote self-managed physical activity in DVA clients – Australian Government Department of Veterans’ Affairs
• Canada: Parents' perceptions regarding their child's screen use (ages 0-5) – Institut national de santé publique du Québec
• Finland: Youth values in foreign and security policy: A behavioral review of the values of Finnish youth – Government of Finland
• Germany: Preparation of an energy renovation strategy for private non-residential buildings in Hamburg – State of Hamburg
• Sweden: Behavioral change interventions aimed at promoting health in older people - Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services

CBC researchers also engaged directly with policymakers throughout the year, contributing behavioural science evidence to parliamentary discussions. Dr Vivi Antonopoulou participated in Evidence Week in Parliament on 21 January, representing the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Behavioural and Social Sciences, and Dr Ayse Allison and the Big Toilet Project team presented their work in Parliament during Evidence Week on 5 November.

Media highlights

• Dr Ayse Allison was on Sunday Morning Live on Sunday 23 March, talking about The Big Toilet Project.
• New research co-authored by Dr Lucy Porter with Dr Paulina Bondarek (UCL’s Institute of Health Informatics) highlighted concerns with the negative effects of fitness apps. The research was covered in many news outlets, including The Telegraph, The Independent, Daily Mail, The Standard, Miami Herald, Newsweek, La Vanguardia (Spain), BILD (Germany), AGI (Italy).

Global engagement and collaboration

• We hosted 10 international visitors, strengthening global collaboration, including colleagues from Denmark, China, Canada, Italy, Uruguay, and the UK.
• Prof Fabi Lorencatto, Dr Elise Crayton and Dr Lucy Porter delivered a two-day workshop in Helsinki as part of the European Joint Action on Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare-Associated Infections (EU-JAMRAI) collaborative, enabling teams from 13 countries to develop behaviour change interventions to improve antimicrobial stewardship.
• Prof Susan Michie visited Sichuan University and Zhejiang University in China and chaired a session at the inaugural Asian Conference on Implementation Science.

Research addressing major societal challenges

Our interdisciplinary research portfolio addresses central questions facing society. Among our 26 active grants, new projects launched in 2025 included:

Ontologies:

The Advancing Prevention Research In Cancer through Ontology Tools (APRICOT) project was officially launched in June. The APRICOT project is the next phase of the Human Behaviour Change Project, focusing on making behaviour change research more accessible, connected, and impactful using ontologies.

Co-design:

Dr Amanda Moore began two NIHR-funded grants:

• ‘Developing inclusive co-design tools for health-related co-design in partnership with minority ethnic communities’
• ‘Embedding co-design in behavioural science approaches to intervention development’.

Sustainability:

• HEARTH: National Research Hub on Net Zero, Health and Extreme Heat (HEARTH). HEARTH is one of seven new transdisciplinary research hubs co-funded by UKRI and NIHR, exploring ways to ensure the UK’s transition to net zero also protects and promotes physical and mental health.
• PAICE: Policy and Implementation for Climate & Health Equity (PAICE). PAICE aims to inform and evaluate policies – both existing and potential – that contribute towards delivering a healthy net zero future in the UK.
• The National Cup Recycling Scheme's ‘Beyond the Bin’ project fund competition was won by Dr Ayse Allison and Dr Lucy Porter. Working with industry stakeholders, they will conduct research into the barriers to recycling paper cups in mainstream systems, with the aim of generating actionable, evidence‑based recommendations that make cup recycling simpler, more accessible, and more effective.