Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics

Sophia Hua and colleagues looked at 510 fruit drinks and found that companies had added vitamin C to many of them. "What’s so bad about adding healthy nutrients to these drinks? Isn’t vitamin C good for us? The truth is, kids in the U.S. aren’t deficient in vitamin C," Dr. Hua writes. "Pumping sugary fruit drinks with vitamin C allows companies to present as a healthy snack what is essentially sugar water."

In this Viewpoint, Kevin Volpp and Cait Lamberton share 4 ways behavioral economics can enhance Food is Medicine programs -- specifically related to referral rates, efficiency and effectiveness of subsidies; presentation of options that encourage healthy food consumption; and the development of a stronger evidence base.

A long-awaited court decision has finally arrived, with disturbing health implications: The ruling exempts select employers from fully covering a daily pill (PrEP) that can prevent a person’s chances of getting HIV by up to 99%. Read more from CHIBE Associate Director Jalpa Doshi and Lorraine Dean in The Hill.

Is offering of a free ride to the pharmacy a worthwhile approach to boost vaccination rates? Katy Milkman and colleagues found that sending behaviorally informed texts was a more successful way to encourage vaccine uptake. https://lnkd.in/gYdSAv5a

Do incentives and feedback help reduce phone use while driving? A new study finds they can. “People tend to think they are better drivers than others,” M. Kit Delgado said. “Providing objective data on how they compare to others is a proven way to motivate people toward a social norm."

CHIBE is saddened to announce the passing of former external advisory board member Gail Wilensky, PhD, on July 11. "For many years Gail provided CHIBE with invaluable guidance as one of our advisory board members from 2010 to 2023, which included several years of service as our Vice Chair,” CHIBE Director Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, said. “We greatly valued her efforts to help us think critically about a range of health policy issues..." Read more about Dr. Wilensky's life and service here.

I'm very proud of this randomized trial of behavioral interventions to reduce distracted driving just published in JAMA Network Open with an incredible team in partnership with Progressive Insurance! (article link: https://lnkd.in/gY4cb7Br). We enrolled over 2,000 auto insurance customers participating in Progressive Snapshot Mobile program, which uses a smartphone app to monitor driving behaviors and provides discounts on insurance for safe drivers. Knowing that the auto insurance industry spends billions on safe driving discounts, we sought to determine whether offering incentives actually reduces handheld phone use while driving and whether redesigning the discounts with behavioral science insights can lead to safer driving. We had a great opportunity because at that time, the Snapshot app measured handheld phone use while driving (one of the biggest predictors of future crash claims https://lnkd.in/ga3iVhA2), but the program was not yet offering discounts for reducing handheld phone use. We randomized a diverse sample of 2,020 participating Snapshot customers from across the U.S. to the following over a 7 week period: 1. Control (could look at app to see how much they used their phone on each trip, but got no active interventions). 2. Weekly social comparison feedback comparing a driver’s phone use relative to other drivers like them 3. Standard incentive ($50 at the end of the intervention period – this delayed discount incentive is the current industry status quo) 4. Weekly social comparison feedback + standard incentive 5. Weekly feedback + incentive reframed with insights from behavioral science ($50, but drivers were told they would be paid in weekly installments and those payments would be withheld if they engaged in phone use while driving [present bias and loss aversion]. We would also show them how much money they are losing each week [regret aversion] and each week they could try again [fresh start effect]. 6. Weekly feedback + double reframed incentive ($100)   We found neither feedback alone or a standard incentive were better than control. However, we found combining an incentive with social comparison feedback significantly reduced phone use: by 15% with a standard incentive and by 21% with the incentive optimized with behavioral insights. And interestingly, but not surprisingly, doubling the incentive amount didn't yield any greater behavior change suggesting that it's more about how the incentives are delivered than the amount. This was a labor of love, with the write up getting put on hold while many of us responded to the Covid pandemic, but I am so glad this out there now! More to come! News release: https://lnkd.in/gkwVbxXz

What is leading to the rise in snacking? Busy lives, long workdays, long commutes, kids’ packed extracurricular schedules, and the food industry's cheap and convenient new products. “You go to Staples. You go to Home Depot. You’re checking out. Why are there gummy bears?” said Christina Roberto in The Wall Street Journal.

New paper out today in JAMA Network Open finds that feedback and financial incentives can help reduce cell phone use while driving by 15% to 21%! See how #BehavioralEconomics insights like loss aversion, regret aversion, fresh start effects, and present bias can help curb distracted driving. (CHIBE authors: M. Kit Delgado, Kevin Volpp, Scott Halpern, Small, Dylan, Roy Rosin) https://lnkd.in/g68Si7NE

This center led by CHIBE Associate Director Amol S Navathe is working to catalyze reform in health care payment in a way that promotes equitable health care delivery and outcomes. Read CHIBE's Q&A with Deputy Director Austin Kilaru to learn more.