Current trends in the study of gender norms and health behaviors

•Gender norms play an important role in men and women's health behaviors.•Research on gender norms is most developed in studies of sexual behaviors.•Recent studies of gender norms and health behaviors are more focused on masculinity.•Gender norms and health research is expanding to new populations.

Gender norms are recognized as one of the major social determinants of health and gender norms can have implications for an individual's health behaviors. This paper reviews the recent advances in research on the role of gender norms on the health behaviors most associated with morbidity and mortality. We find that first, the study of gender norms and health behaviors is varied across different types of health behaviors, second, research on masculinity and masculine norms appears to have taken on an increasing proportion of studies on the relationship between gender norms and health, and third, there are new and varied populations integrated into the study of gender norms and health behaviors.