Geert Crombez

• PhD
• Ghent University

Background and Aims Mobile health (mHealth) interventions may help increase physical activity (PA) in diverse groups, including cancer survivors (CSs). Developing an intervention requires a needs assessment of stakeholders, focusing on the preferred features of the application from the perspectives of both CSs and healthcare providers (HCPs). Meth...

Pain catastrophizing is understood as a negative cognitive and emotional response to pain. Researchers, clinicians, advocates, and patients have reported stigmatizing effects of the term on patients when used clinically and in the media. This report describes the results of an international, observational, cross-sectional study investigation of cli...

Background Experience sampling methods typically involve multiple self-report assessments per day over consecutive days. Unlike traditional patient-reported outcome measures or interviews, such methods offer the possibility to capture the temporal fluctuations of experiences in daily environments, making them valuable for studying the daily lives o...

Purpose: Chronic pain is prevalent among breast cancer survivors. Bio-psychosocial factors interplay in its exacerbation and maintenance. Therefore, prevention and treatment require an interdisciplinary response and the integration of various approaches. To deliver this way of working, healthcare professionals may need training. We developed an e-...

Introduction Personalising recommendations for physical activity coping plans can help bridging the physical activity intention-behaviour gap. Data-driven ‘black-box’ approaches result in recommendations that prove difficult to explain, and may have undesired consequences. This study aimed to explicitly link barriers and coping strategies using end...

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Learred Societies.

There has been a rapid expansion in the quantity and complexity of data, information and knowledge created in the behavioural and social sciences, yet the field is not advancing understanding, practice or policy to the extent that the insights warrant. One challenge is that research often progresses in disciplinary silos and is reported using incon...

We aimed to investigate the genetic associations of neuropathic pain in a deeply phenotyped cohort. Participants with neuropathic pain were cases and compared with those exposed to injury or disease but without neuropathic pain as control subjects. Diabetic polyneuropathy was the most common aetiology of neuropathic pain. A standardised quantitativ...

Pain states fluctuate over time, and across situations. Similarly, there is variation in risk and protective factors and how they impact on these pain-related transitions. We are interested in whether such variations are more than random, and whether they can be accounted for by observed variables. The availability of large longitudinal datasets, s...

Causal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) serve as intuitive tools to visually represent causal relationships between variables. While they find widespread use in guiding study design, data collection and statistical analysis, their adoption remains relatively rare in the domain of psychology. In this paper we describe the relevance of DAGs for health...

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international network of experts to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and ensuring the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary introduces and explains the framework for patients and the public.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international network of experts to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and ensuring the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary introduces and explains the framework for patients and the public.

Introduction: Personalised recommendations for action and coping plans for physical activity (PA) may reduce user burden and increase plan quality. Ontologies are a promising alternative to existing black-box approaches for creating such personalised recommendations as they are able to integrate knowledge from domain experts, input from end-users a...

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This executive summary outlines the key features of that framework.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This executive summary outlines the key features of that framework.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Editors and Publishers.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Institutions that undertake research.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Researchers.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Regulators and Policymakers.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Funders of Research.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Peer Reviewers of research.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Funders of Research.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Regulators and Policymakers.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Researchers.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Peer Reviewers of research.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Institutions that undertake research.

The ENTRUST-PE project convened an international, interdisciplinary network to develop an integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of pain research. This summary outlines the key features of that framework and presents recommendations for Editors and Publishers.

Background FORECAST is a prospective longitudinal cohort study exploring mechanism-based prognostic factors for pain persistence in sciatica. Here, we share an update on this largest deeply-phenotyped primary care sciatica cohort. Methods/results Our cohort includes 180 people with sciatica (score >4 on Stynes’ Sum Score), aged 18–85, within 3 mon...

The personal, social and economic burden of chronic pain is enormous. Yet patients with chronic pain, clinicians and the public are often poorly served by an evidence architecture that contains multiple structural weaknesses which reduce confidence in treatment practice. Weaknesses include incomplete research governance, a lack of diversity and inc...

The personal, social and economic burden of chronic pain is enormous. Yet patients with chronic pain, clinicians and the public are often poorly served by an evidence architecture that contains multiple structural weaknesses which reduce confidence in treatment practice. Weaknesses include incomplete research governance, a lack of diversity and inc...

It is still unclear how and why some patients develop painful and others painless polyneuropathy. The aim of this study was to identify multiple factors associated with painful polyneuropathies (NeuP). A total of 1181 patients of the multicenter DOLORISK database with painful (probable or definite NeuP) or painless (unlikely NeuP) probable or confi...

This realist review aims to identify the working mechanisms and contextual preconditions for sedentary behavior (SB) change in older adults to guide the development of future interventions. The review followed the iterative process of Pawson et al. (1997). First, research questions were defined and an initial program theory (IPT) was established. S...

Objectives: The review aims to create an overview of current evidence on the short-term effect of physical activity (PA) on cognition in adults aged 50 and older, focusing on which cognitive domains, cognitive tests, and outcomes are used, and whether effects were demonstrated.Methods: The MEDLINE, Embase, and Cochrane Central databases were search...

In this scientific advisory report, which offers guidance to public health policy-makers, the Superior Health Council of Belgium provides recommendations of digital interventions and apps for mental health. Available in English, French and Dutch (https://www.health.belgium.be/en/report-9745-apps-mental-health). To be cited as SHC - Superior Health...

Background Digital interventions are a promising avenue to promote physical activity in healthy adults. Current practices recommend to include end-users early on in the development process. This study focuses on the wishes and needs of users regarding an a mobile health (mHealth) application that promotes physical activity in healthy adults, and on...

Pain can be described as an urge to escape from bodily threat and is a driver of avoidance learning. Although avoidance can be helpful in the early phases of pain, it can interfere with individuals' valued life goals, causing disability and distress. Specifically, when performed after an injury has healed, avoidance may prevent individuals from upd...

BACKGROUND Experience sampling methods (ESM), self-report methods that typically utilize multiple assessments per day, can provide detailed knowledge of cancer patients’ daily experiences, potentially informing oncological care. The use of ESM among people with advanced cancer is limited and no validated ESM questionnaires currently exist in oncolo...

Background The experience sampling method (ESM), a self-report method that typically uses multiple assessments per day, can provide detailed knowledge of the daily experiences of people with cancer, potentially informing oncological care. The use of the ESM among people with advanced cancer is limited, and no validated ESM questionnaires have been...

Introduction People with advanced cancer can experience a wide range of multidimensional symptoms or concerns, but little is known about when and how these fluctuate in daily life. Experience sampling methods (ESMs) involve repeated self-reports in people’s natural contexts aimed at uncovering everyday life experiences. ESM has limited recall bias...

Associated commentary Fillingim RB. Redefining sensitization could be a sensitive issue. PAIN Rep 2024;9:e1126.

Background There is a need for physical activity promotion interventions in adolescents and young adults with intellectual disabilities. Current interventions have shown limited effectiveness, which may be attributed to the absence of theory and a population-specific development. Combining a planning model (including theory) and cocreation with the...

We define narrative bias as a tendency to interpret information as part of a larger story or pattern, regardless of whether the facts support the full narrative. Narrative bias in title and abstract means that results reported in the title and abstract of an article are done so in a way that could distort their interpretation and mislead readers wh...

Background A healthy lifestyle may improve mental health. It is yet not known whether and how a mobile intervention can be of help in achieving this in adolescents. This study investigated the effectiveness and perceived underlying mechanisms of the mobile health (mHealth) intervention #LIFEGOALS to promote healthy lifestyles and mental health. #LI...

Many gaps remain in finding effective, safe, and equitable treatments for children and adolescents with chronic pain and in accessing treatments in different settings. A major goal of the field is to improve assessment of pain and related experience. Valid and reliable patient-reported outcome measures are critical for advancing knowledge of clinic...

Background Despite the availability of physical activity (PA) interventions, many older adults are still not active enough. This might be partially explained by the often-limited effects of PA interventions. In general, health behavior change interventions often do not focus on contextual and time-varying determinants, which may limit their effecti...

Big data and machine learning techniques offer opportunities to investigate the effects of psychological factors on pain outcomes. Nevertheless, these advances can only deliver when the quality of the data is high and the underpinning causal assumptions are considered. We argue that there is room for improvement and identify some challenges in the...

Planning is an important tool to translate intentions into physical activity (PA) behavior. Affective and bodily states are known to influence how much PA individuals perform, but their impact on to formulation of PA plans is not yet known. The aim of the current study is to explore the effect of within- and between-subject variations in affective...

Files accompanying manuscript "Problem solutions for physical activity plans: building on classifications of behaviour change techniques. "

Mindfulness interventions have become popular in recent decades, with many trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses of the impact of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) on pain. Although many meta-analyses provide support for MBIs, the results are more mixed than they at first appear. The aim of this umbrella review was to determine the str...

BACKGROUND There is a need for physical activity promotion interventions in adolescents and young adults with intellectual disabilities. Current interventions have shown limited effectiveness, which may be attributed to the absence of theory and a population-specific development. Combining a planning model (including theory) and cocreation with the...

Background Attentional bias to pain-related information has been implicated in pain chronicity. To date, research investigating attentional bias modification training (ABMT) procedures in people with chronic pain has found variable success, perhaps because training paradigms are typically repetitive and monotonous, which could negatively affect eng...

BACKGROUND Attentional bias to pain-related information has been implicated in pain chronicity. To date, research investigating attentional bias modification training (ABMT) procedures in people with chronic pain has found variable success, perhaps because training paradigms are typically repetitive and monotonous, which could negatively affect eng...

BACKGROUND When trying to be more physically active, preparing for possible barriers by considering potential solutions increases likelihood of plan enactment. Digital interventions can support this process by providing personalized recommendations for solutions, but this requires that possible solutions are identified and classified. OBJECTIVE Th...

Background When trying to be more physically active, preparing for possible barriers by considering potential coping strategies increases the likelihood of plan enactment. Digital interventions can support this process by providing personalized recommendations for coping strategies, but this requires that possible coping strategies are identified a...

There is an ongoing debate about whether pain can be classically conditioned, but surprisingly, evidence is scarce. Here, we report 3 experiments investigating this idea. In a virtual reality task, healthy participants were approached and touched near or on their hand with a coloured pen (blue or yellow). During acquisition, participants learned th...

Linguistic stimuli are commonly used in research to investigate the processing of pain. To provide researchers with a dataset of pain-related and non-pain-related linguistic stimuli, this research investigated 1) the associative strength between pain-related words and the pain construct; 2) the pain-relatedness ratings of pain words; and 3) the var...

Pain-related pictures are useful to study how individuals respond to pain-related stimulation. Such pictures can occasionally be found in databases for affective pictures. However, a validated database specifically for pain-related pictures is not available yet. In two experiments (N = 185 and 103 respectively), we developed and validated the Exper...

Introduction Itch is unpleasant and induces the urge to scratch. This is adaptive to remove the itch-inducing stimulus from the skin. Accordingly, itch draws attention to protect our bodily integrity. Recent studies investigated whether attention is preferentially drawn towards its location, i.e., attentional bias (AB), and also whether this bias c...

Introduction: Sciatica is a common condition and is associated with higher levels of pain, disability, poorer quality of life, and increased use of health resources compared with low back pain alone. Although many patients recover, a third develop persistent sciatica symptoms. It remains unclear, why some patients develop persistent sciatica as no...

Background Co-creation is a method to develop acceptable, contextually appropriate and potentially more effective interventions. Adolescents with intellectual disabilities (ID) seldomly participate in research and program development due to the assumption that they lack the capacity to understand and discuss the related topics. Objective This stud...

Introduction Ontologies are a formal way to represent knowledge in a particular field and have the potential to transform the field of health promotion and digital interventions. However, few researchers in physical activity (PA) are familiar with ontologies, and the field can be difficult to navigate. This systematic review aims to (1) identify on...

The biopsychosocial model has been successfully adopted in pain research and practice. It has proven a successful heuristic tool to review available research on complex diseases and illnesses (Gatchel et al., 2007), and provides foundation for interdisciplinary practice (Gatchel & Turk, 2008). It has also been adopted by the World Health Organizati...

The purpose of this article is to present a goal setting procedure for the outpatient rehabilitation of patients with an acquired brain-injury (ABI). The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is integrated with clinical case formulations, which are typical for behaviour therapy. Relevan...

BACKGROUND Improving healthy lifestyles may promote mental health in adolescents, and mobile health (mHealth) may be a valuable way to reach that objective. So far, no mobile healthy lifestyle intervention existed for promoting mental health in the general adolescent population. The mHealth intervention #LIFEGOALS was developed using a participator...

Background Despite effectiveness of action and coping planning in digital health interventions to promote physical activity (PA), attrition rates remain high. Indeed, support to make plans is often abstract and generic. Nevertheless, people are different, and context varies. Tailored support involving personalized suggestions of specific plans, may...

Background: This paper describes the development process of the mobile health (mHealth) intervention #LIFEGOALS, using the CeHRes Roadmap (van Gemert-Pijnen et al., 2011) as framework. #LIFEGOALS is directed to the general population of young adolescents (12-15y) in Flanders, Belgium, with the aim to improve their lifestyle behaviors for promoting...

Abstract Background Despite effectiveness of action and coping planning in digital health interventions to promote physical activity (PA), attrition rates remain high. Indeed, support to make plans is often abstract and similar for each individual. Nevertheless, people are different, and context varies. Tailored support at the content level, involv...

Background Rhinitis medicamentosa (RM) is a type of non-allergic rhinitis caused by prolonged use of nasal decongestants (NDs). Although it is a preventable phenotype of rhinitis, little is known about patients dealing with this condition. Objective To gain a better understanding of patients’ views and experiences of ND overuse; and potential faci...

Background Co-creation is a method to develop acceptable, contextually appropriate and potentially more effective interventions. Adolescents with intellectual disabilities (ID) seldomly participate in research and program development due to the assumption that they lack the capacity to understand and discuss the related topics. Objective This stud...

BACKGROUND Despite the availability of physical activity (PA) interventions, many older adults are still not active enough. This might be partially explained by the often-limited effects of PA interventions. In general, health behavior change interventions often do not focus on contextual and time-varying determinants, which may limit their effecti...

Neuropathic pain is difficult to treat, and an understanding of the risk factors for its onset and resolution is warranted. This study aimed to develop and externally validate two clinical risk models to predict onset and resolution of chronic neuropathic pain. Participants of Generation Scotland: Scottish Family Health Study (GS; general Scottish...

Pain catastrophizing is understood as a negative cognitive and emotional response to pain. Researchers, advocates and patients have reported stigmatizing effects of the term in clinical settings and the media. We conducted an international study to investigate patient perspectives on the term pain catastrophizing. Open-ended electronic patient and...

Background The promotion of multiple healthy lifestyles has been implemented as part of public health efforts to prevent and reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases. However, these interventions have shown a heterogeneity in their effectiveness. The pursuit of multiple daily goals may influence overall progress in achieving health goals. Hor...

Rapidly attending towards potentially harmful stimuli to prevent possible damage to the body is a critical component of adaptive behavior. Research suggests that individuals display an attentional bias, i.e., preferential allocation of attention, for consciously perceived bodily sensations that signal potential threat, like itch or pain. Evidence i...

When making behavioural decisions, individuals need to balance between exploiting known options or exploring new ones. How individuals solve this exploration-exploitation dilemma (EED) is a key research question across psychology, leading to attempting to disentangle the cognitive mechanisms behind it. A potential predictive factor of performance i...

When making behavioural decisions, individuals need to balance between exploiting known options or exploring new ones. How individuals solve this exploration-exploitation dilemma (EED) is a key research question across psychology, leading to attempting to disentangle the cognitive mechanisms behind it. A potential predictive factor of performance i...

When making behavioral decisions, individuals need to balance between exploiting known options or exploring new ones. How individuals solve this exploration-exploitation dilemma (EED) is a key research question across psychology, leading to attempting to disentangle the cognitive mechanisms behind it. A potential predictive factor of performance in...

Introduction: Ontologies, i.e. formal ways to represent knowledge into a particular domain, have the potential to transform the field of health promotion and digital interventions However, few researchers in the domain of physical activity (PA) are familiar with ontologies, and the field can be difficult to navigate due to differences in quality. T...

Objectives: Neurological complications including pain are common after treatment for breast cancer. This prospective study investigated the symptoms, intensity and interference of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuro-pathy. (CIPN) in the feet and hands compared to surgery- and radiation-induced neuropathy in the breast and upper arm. Methods: C...

Introduction Attentional processes are involved in the experience of itch and pain. They interrupt task performance (ie, attentional interference) or bias allocation of attention toward the somatosensory stimulation, that is, attentional bias (AB). Research on AB toward pain is mostly focused on stimuli with short durations; hampering generalizatio...

Objective The tendency to flexibly adjust goals that are hindered by chronic illness is related to indicators of wellbeing. However, cognitive flexibility is often impaired in persons with an acquired brain injury (ABI), possibly affecting the ability to flexibly adjust goals. In this study we examined whether cognitive flexibility is positively re...

Background To improve the treatment of painful Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy (DPN) and associated co-morbidities, a better understanding of the pathophysiology and risk factors for painful DPN is required. Using harmonised cohorts (N = 1230) we have built models that classify painful versus painless DPN using quality of life (EQ5D), lifestyle (smo...

Background Many theoretical frameworks have been used in order to understand health behaviors such as physical activity, sufficient sleep, healthy eating habits, etc. In most research studies, determinants within these frameworks are assessed only once and thus are considered as stable over time, which leads to rather ‘static’ health behavior chang...

The International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention [CSEA], 1995) is a set of pictures that is widely used in experimental research on emotion and attention. In this study, the normative ratings of a subset of the IAPS were compared with the ratings from a Flemish sample. Eighty Flemish first-year psychol...

Background: Mobile health (mHealth) interventions may help adolescents adopt healthy lifestyles. However, attrition in these interventions is high. Overall, there is a lack of research on nonusage attrition in adolescents, particularly regarding the role of socioeconomic status (SES). Objective: The aim of this study was to focus on the role of...

Neuropathic pain is difficult to treat, and an understanding of the risk factors for its onset and resolution is warranted. This study aimed to develop and externally validate two clinical risk models to predict onset and resolution of chronic neuropathic pain. Participants of Generation Scotland: Scottish Family Health Study (GS; general Scottish...