What health psychology and behavioural science contributed to the UK's Covid-19 response

What is it about?

In March 2020, the British Psychological Society (BPS) convened a Covid-19 coordinating group of member networks, tasking each with leading a workstream to highlight psychology's role in the pandemic response. This article reports the work of the Behavioural Science and Disease Prevention workstream, which focused on translating psychological evidence into practical guidance for public health messaging, policy design and behaviour change communication. The workstream addressed both immediate infection control behaviours, including hand hygiene, physical distancing and self-isolation, and wider behavioural impacts of the pandemic on physical activity, eating, substance use and mental health. It set out how behavioural science evidence could be applied to design sustainable interventions, anticipate public responses to changing guidance, and communicate risk and protective behaviours effectively. The article describes both the workstream's activities and the evidence base it drew on.

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Why is it important?

The Covid-19 pandemic was the first modern public health emergency in which behavioural science was explicitly mobilised at national level to inform government communication and policy. This article documents the contribution health psychologists made in real time, providing a contemporaneous account of how the discipline engaged with the crisis that is valuable for future pandemic preparedness planning. The involvement of a multidisciplinary group of health psychologists from across the UK gives the piece breadth and credibility, and its publication in Health Psychology Update ensured the findings reached practitioners as well as researchers. The experience also generated significant learning about the opportunities and limitations of deploying behavioural science rapidly in emergency public health contexts, of direct relevance to ongoing pandemic preparedness work.