Social Science Research Council

Last week, the Mayor and City Council finalized the city’s budget. The budget included $25 million to help build a new trauma center in the Rockaway peninsula. This people-centered investment builds on a groundswell of attention following a 2019 DATA2GO.NYC research collaboration between Measure of America, The Trace, and THE CITY. We found a severe lack of trauma coverage in Southern Queens. Following the release of this piece, Queens borough president candidates pledged to address this inequity once elected. Then, in 2023, the state contributed $150 million to construct a trauma hospital in Jamaica. It’s great to see additional life-saving investments in trauma care in Queens. Thank you to The Helmsley Charitable Trust for your support of this work. Read about the budget and the reporting on trauma care in Queens here:  https://lnkd.in/ens7r_K9 https://lnkd.in/eWKSfE9F https://lnkd.in/e7sQ-emb Tracy Perrizo Laura Laderman Maya Miller Sean Campbell

🚨New Paper Out in Nature🚨 To simplify & speed up COVID vaxxes in mid-2021, the White House announced free Uber & Lyft rides to vax sites. Great idea, right? We ran a HUGE experiment: Do free round-trip Lyft rides to pharmacies boost vaccination? Here's what we learned: Experts and non-experts were bullish that offering free round-trip rides to pharmacies for vaxxes would more than double low booster vax rates in fall ‘22. But gifting free Lyft rides to and from pharmacies in text reminders about boosters did no more than sending vax reminders alone. What did encourage vaccination? Our 3.66 million person megastudy tested 7 different types of reminder messages as well as reminders offering free round-trip rides to the pharmacy. Reminders led to a 21% (1.05 pctg pt) increase in COVID boosters and an 8% increase in flu shots. We had a 3-way tie for the best reminder message. #1 Encouraged patients to make a vaccination plan and suggested a specific day of the week, time of day and pharmacy location for an appointment (picked to match when/where the patient had received their last vax). Also tied for the rank of top-performer in our megastudy was a reminder communicating that there were high current infection rates in a patient’s county. And finally, a reminder that appeared to be sent directly by the pharmacy team at the patient’s most frequently visited pharmacy. Read the full (open access) Nature Portfolio paper here: https://lnkd.in/e4n2RHmS Huge thanks to the amazing staff at the Behavior Change for Good Initiative who made this project possible (particularly Sean F. Ellis and Dena Gromet), to our wonderful partners at CVS Pharmacy (Maryann Beauvais, Jonathon Bellows and Cheryl Marandola), to our funders (e.g. Social Science Research Council #MercuryProject) and to the excellent referees at Nature (and Mary Elizabeth Sutherland) who gave us great feedback. Thanks also to my faculty collaborators Angela Duckworth (❤️), John List (who moved mountains to make this work possible), Kevin Volpp, Mitesh Patel (who had the idea to do this test!), Neil Lewis, Jr., Ron Berman, and Christophe Van den Bulte (who perfected all our stats!). And to my amazing PhD student collaborator Rob Kuan. The Wharton School | University of Pennsylvania | Cornell University | University of Chicago | Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics | Behavior Change for Good Initiative