I coined the term “actively caring” in 1990 while working with a team of safety leaders at Exxon Chemical in Baytown, Texas. Our vision was to cultivate a brother/sister keeper's culture in which everyone looks out for each other's safety on a daily basis. This requires people to routinely go above and beyond the call of duty on behalf of the health, safety, and well-being of others. We agreed that “actively caring for people” was an ideal label for this company-wide paradigm shift. Most people do care about the well-being of others, but relatively few individuals “act” on behalf of this caring in the best ways. Our challenge was to get everyone to act effectively on their caring – to actively care.

We began systematic research in our Center for Applied Behavior Systems at Virginia Tech (VT) to develop, evaluate, and continuously improve intervention techniques to increase the frequency and improve the quality of interpersonal actively caring for people (AC4P) behavior throughout a work culture. We have continued this research to the present, broadening applications beyond the business world to educational settings and throughout communities, and targeting a variety of behaviors affecting human well-being. This book highlights evidence-based interventions developed by us and others to increase effective AC4P behavior in various environmental settings and under diverse circumstances.

Following the VT tragedy on April 16, 2007, when an armed student took the lives of thirty-two students and faculty and injured seventeen others, the AC4P concept took on a new focus and prominence for my students and me. In a time of great uncertainty and reflection, those most affected by the tragedy were not thinking about themselves, but rather were acting to help classmates, friends, and even strangers heal. This collective effort was manifested in the AC4P Movement for culture change (see www.ac4p.org), making the belongingness spirit of the Hokie community even stronger. My students and I envisioned applying the principle of positive reinforcement to spread this AC4P Movement beyond VT's Blacksburg campus.

We took the green wristbands, engraved with “Actively Caring for People,” that I had been distributing at safety conferences for two decades and added a numbering system to enable computer tracking of the AC4P process: see, act, pass, and share (SAPS).