Prof. Dr. Rik Crutzen

Biography

Rik Crutzen is a Professor of Behaviour Change & Technology at the Department of Health Promotion, Care and Public Health Research Institute, Maastricht University, the Netherlands. A central theme in his work is the systematic development, implementation, and evaluation of behaviour change interventions (e.g., using and developing the Intervention Mapping approach). He has a strong focus on methodological and theoretical progress, especially to foster understanding of behaviour as a crucial first step in intervention development.

Summary of presentation

Behaviour change is key to improve people’s health and well-being – also in the context of prehabilitation. This requires stimulating and supporting change in both patients and professionals. In this keynote, the following points will be discussed: (1) Understanding behaviour is a crucial first step in intervention development; (2) Core Processes are a helpful and systematic way to address questions that need to be answered to find evidence-based solutions in a problem-driven context (such as prehabilitation); and (3) Sustainable behaviour change is required to go from prehabilitation to posthabilitation. In discussing these points, clear links to existing evidence and theory are made and examples from practice are used to illustrate them. Don’t expect a quick fix, yet a discussion of what is needed to do justice to the complexity of behaviour change – and for a bright future of prehabilitation.