Belinda Borrelli

Dr. Belinda Borrelli, PhD is Professor and Director of The Center for Behavioral Science Research at Boston University, in the Department of Health Policy and Health Services Research at Boston University, Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine.  She is also the PI and Director of BU’s Mobile and Electronic Health-ARC, a multi-disciplinary digital research collaborative. In 2013, she was invited to be a Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester, UK., and continues in that role. She was formally a Professor at Brown University, in both the School of Public Health at Brown University and the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University School of Medicine. Dr. Borrelli received her MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and completed her residency and fellowship training in Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at Brown University.  She proceeded through the academic ranks at Brown University School of Medicine and became Full Professor there in 2009.

Dr. Borrelli is a Clinical Psychologist who specializes in motivating behavior change, particularly among those who are not motivated to change.  She has over 180 peer-reviewed publications and more than 25 NIH grant awards as PI and Co-I, in addition to numerous grant awards from other agencies and foundations.  Prof. Borrelli’s research has focuses on developing and testing treatments to motivate health behavior change across a wide variety of areas (smoking and vaping cessation, secondhand smoke, oral health, dietary behaviors, physical activity, adherence to medications and treatment regimens for chronic diseases).  Her research has targeted a variety of priority populations (e.g., children, teens, middle-age and older adults, people with disabilities, public housing residents, Latinx, hospitalized and home health care patients) and conducts mixed methods research to develop interventions tailored to these groups. She specializes in integrating theory-based treatments into medical, dental and community settings, and developing and testing digital health platforms to initiate and sustain health behavior change (text messaging, mobile apps, Virtual Reality, Gen-AI conversational agents).

Dr. Borrelli was appointed by the Secretary of HHS to serve on the National Advisory Dental and Craniofacial Research Council.  She is Chair of NIA’s Data, Safety & Monitoring Board.  She has served on grant review panels in the US, Europe, and the UK and is a Fellow of the American College of Reviewers.  She served as an advisor to multiple NIH institutes on treatment fidelity (NIDCR, NHLBI, NIA), has published several invited articles on best practice guidelines that have over 5,000 citations, and was invited to the National Academy of Science and Engineering (NASEM) to speak on the topic.  She provided expert testimony to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) on motivating health behavior change.

She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, The Society of Behavioral Medicine, and The Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco. Dr. Borrelli has been Associate Editor or Senior Associate Editor at leading journals in psychology (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and Health Psychology) as well as the most cited journal in addiction science (Addiction). She Co-Edited a special issue of Health Psychology on digital interventions. She is currently Associate Editor of “American Psychologist,” the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association.

She has received recognition for her work including  being named  “TEDMED Research Scholar,”  receiving  BU’s “Research Collaborator of the Year award,”  and receiving awards from the Society of Behavioral Medicine (Digital Health Paper of the Year; Citation Abstract Award).  In 2026, she received the Giddon Award for Distinguished Research in Behavioral Science from the International Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (IADR).  Her work has been featured across many news outlets (e.g., NY Times, NPR, Baltimore Sun, NBC news).

She has taught Motivational Interviewing to thousands of physicians, nurses and other health care practitioners across the US and abroad, including developing a hospital-based program.  She has given more than 100 invited talks nationally and internationally, including 11 invited Grand Rounds. She served as primary mentor to over 45 interns, post-docs, and NIH K award recipients. She is an invited faculty member of the NIH/NIA R25 Stage Trials Teaching Program and continues in that role.