SEPTEMBER 2018
The Healthy Nudge
Welcome to The Healthy Nudge . Each month, we'll get you up to speed on the latest developments in policy-relevant health behavioral economics research at CHIBE. Want more frequent updates? Follow us on Twitter @PennCHIBE and visit our website .
NIA Sets Agenda for Behavioral Economics & Health Promotion Among Aging Populations
As the summer comes to a close, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has published the proceedings of this June's NIA Workshop on the application of behavioral economics to research on promoting the healthy behavior of older and middle-aged adults. CHIBE's Director, Dr. Kevin Volpp, served on the workshop planning committee, and discussed the use of Way to Health to facilitate the testing of interventions, among other topics.
Shifting Towards Value
In a newly published paper in Healthcare, Drs. Kevin Volpp and Amol Navathe describe a recent initiative involving the redesign of primary care provider payment in the State of Hawaii by changing the incentives for individual providers. The article provides useful guidance to health plans and health delivery systems considering shifting primary care payment away from fee-for-service towards value.
How Behavior Spreads
In How Behavior Spreads: the Science of Compex Contagion, CHIBE affiliated faculty member Damon Centola, PhD illustrates the ways in which Web-based insights can be applied to solve problems of organizational change, cultural evolution, and social innovation. Perhaps surprisingly, Centola finds that the same conditions that accelerate the viral expansion of an epidemic actually inhibit the spread of behaviors within social networks.
Blog Spotlight
What is Strategic Science?
Director of the Psychology of Eating And Consumer Health (PEACH) lab and CHIBE Steering Committee Member, Christina Roberto, PhD, explains the strategic science approach of designing and evaluating food labeling policies. This approach can be applied to numerous other areas of public health research.
  Upcoming
Events
In The News
One of Obamacare's Big
Experiments to Lower Costs is Working Surprisingly Well

E-cigarettes Linked to Marijuana Use, Study Says

Why People Can't Resist the Viral Lure of the KiKi Challenge

Architects of Innovation

Skilled Nursing Outcomes Don’t Always Improve Along with Star Rating Gains

How Firms Can Convince Employees to Quit Smoking

Researchers Uncover Factors Behind Health Care Workplace Inclusion

Plucking Out the Heart

Pushing Doctors to Prescribe Cholesterol-Lowering Statins Triples Prescription Rate

People With More Self-Control Feel Less Hunger, Fatigue, and Stress

Florida Has One of the Worst Health Care Systems in the Nation, Report Finds

A Squirmy, Slimy, Crunchy New Potential Staple of the American Diet
 CHIBE Profile
Emily Yang, MSPH recently joined CHIBE as a research coordinator in the Psychology of Eating And Consumer Health (PEACH) lab. Ms. Yang received her B.S. in Biology from Duke and completed her M.S.P.H. at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests are centered around food access, obesity, and nutritional health improvements through environmental and behavioral changes.
What drew you to your new position at the PEACH Lab? How does the role connect to your previous work and interests?
I have always been interested in the translation of research into real world applications. Through my master's studies and experience working at a think tank, I was able to explore many aspects of both nutrition research and policy. I was drawn to the PEACH Lab because of Dr. Roberto's "strategic science" approach, which brings researchers and policymakers together to improve the nutritional environment. 

What new PEACH Lab projects are you most excited to be working on?
While I was a first-year masters student at Hopkins, I collected data in Baltimore as a research assistant for the PEACH Lab's Philadelphia Beverage Tax Evaluation.  In a fun turn of events, I'm now in charge of coordinating data collection and training the incoming research assistants in Philadelphia. 

Is there any particular new research in the area of healthy eating behavior change that you find especially fascinating?
A  study we are reading for our lab's Journal Club highlighted work that has been done in ‘network nudging’, harnessing peer-to-peer transmission of behavior. Finding ways to incorporate social networks and systems thinking into behavior change research could result in innovative and interesting directions for this field.
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The Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) at the University of Pennsylvania conducts behavioral economics research aimed at reducing the disease burden from major U.S. public health problems. Originally founded within the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics , our mission is to inform health policy, improve healthcare delivery and increase healthy behavior.
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