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. See our 5 top stories below.
The details: A Texas bill on the brink of becoming law would crack down on major food manufacturers, requiring them to label products with warnings about ingredients “not recommended for human consumption” under the standards of countries other than the United States, Fortune reports.
Dr. Christina Roberto's take: Her qualm with the legislation in question isn’t that it isn’t supported by scientific research or oversteps boundaries with food companies, but that it doesn’t go far enough in setting standards to protect public health. She would like to see legislation advocating for warnings about salt, sugar, and saturated fats in certain foods, as well as taxing or banning them from schools.
The event: Penn Medicine and the American Heart Association (AHA) co-organized an event at a West Philly church, one of the sites for the Penn Medicine/AHA “Team Up to Take Down Blood Pressure” initiative.
What else to know: CHIBE Director Dr. Kevin Volpp described the AHA Health Care by Food initiative’s goals of building evidence to make healthy food more accessible to people with chronic conditions, the importance of federal funding in supporting research on what works for whom, and the body of work done at CHIBE that has created a foundation for improving health for a variety of chronic conditions. Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, discussed the importance of blood pressure control, eating healthy, and other aspects of healthy living.
What to know: Cash transfer programs are important tools for improving population health, not just reducing poverty.
One example: In a Lancet Public Health commentary, Drs. Aaron Richterman, Brendan Maughan-Brown, and Harsha Thirumurthy point to Brazil's Bolsa Família Program, which provides an average of $139 per month to over 20 million households in poverty, conditional on behaviors such as school attendance and use of health services.
Number of lives saved: The study that examined the program (by Daniella M. Cavalcanti and colleagues) estimates that the program averted over 700,000 deaths and 8 million hospitalizations.
The initial study: In the Be Active study, researchers sought to increase physical activity. They successfully used texts, gamification, and incentives to encourage participants to increase their steps over a year.
What the qualitative analysis found: The intervention may have been most effective for those with intrinsic motivation, competitiveness, and social support.
How can future studies build off these results? Results may be improved by tailoring components based on participants’ personal traits and level of social support to optimize motivation.
The context: On May 1, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a new placebo testing policy for all new vaccines. Drs. Paul Offit and Alison Buttenheim (CHIBE's Scientific Director) spoke at a Penn LDI virtual seminar about this new policy.
One problem: Withholding an effective vaccine from placebo groups exposes participants to preventable disease risks.
Another problem: “A policy like this new federal placebo testing requirement could open the door in state legislatures to propose all kinds of bills to loosen our vaccine mandate system,” Dr. Buttenheim said. “...You can imagine a state legislature that isn’t crazy about vaccinations taking this new federal law and saying, ‘Okay, you can only mandate a vaccine that’s been placebo-controlled, trial-tested.’"
Dr. Buttenheim's take: Dr. Buttenheim characterized the new policies as “a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. ...Overall, this is the quite deliberate, undermining of national confidence so that high-coverage vaccination for these vaccine-preventable diseases doesn’t happen."
