Behavioural Insights In Health Care

The definitive introduction to the behavioral insights approach, which applies evidence about human behavior to practical problems. Our behavior is strongly influenced by factors that lie outside our conscious awareness, although we tend to underestimate the power of this “automatic” side of our behavior. As a result, governments make ineffective policies, businesses create bad products, and individuals make unrealistic plans. In contrast, the behavioral insights approach applies evidence about actual human behavior—rather than assumptions about it—to practical problems. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, written by two leading experts in the field, offers an accessible introduction to behavioral insights, describing core features, origins, and practical examples. These insights have opened up new ways of addressing some of the biggest challenges faced by societies, changing the way that governments, businesses, and nonprofits work in the process. This book shows how the approach is grounded in a concern with practical problems, the use of evidence about human behavior to address those problems, and experimentation to evaluate the impact of the solutions. It gives an overview of the approach's origins in psychology and behavioral economics, its early adoption by the UK's pioneering “nudge unit,” and its recent expansion into new areas. The book also provides examples from across different policy areas and guidance on how to run a behavioral insights project. Finally, the book outlines the limitations and ethical implications of the approach, and what the future holds for this fast-moving area.

Behavioral economics has potential to offer novel solutions to some of today's most pressing public health problems: How do we persuade people to eat healthy and lose weight? How can health professionals communicate health risks in a way that is heeded? How can food labeling be modified to inform healthy food choices? Behavioral Economics and Public Health is the first book to apply the groundbreaking insights of behavioral economics to the persisting problems of health behaviors and behavior change. In addition to providing a primer on the behavioral economics principles that are most relevant to public health, this book offers details on how these principles can be employed to mitigating the world's greatest health threats, including obesity, smoking, risky sexual behavior, and excessive drinking. With contributions from an international team of scholars from psychology, economics, marketing, public health, and medicine, this book is a trailblazing new approach to the most difficult and important problems of our time.

A look at the American health care system through analysis of consumer and provider behavior. The health care industry in the US is peculiar. We spend close to 18% of our GDP on health care, yet other countries get better results—and we don’t know why. To date, we still lack widely accepted answers to simple questions, such as “Would requiring everyone to buy health insurance make us better off?” Drawing on behavioral economics as an alternative to the standard tools of health economics, author Douglas E. Hough seeks to diagnose the ills of health care today more clearly. A behavioral perspective makes sense of key contradictions—from the seemingly irrational choices that we sometimes make as patients, to the incongruous behavior of physicians, to the morass of the long-lived debate surrounding reform. With the new health care law in effect, it is more important than ever that consumers, health care industry leaders, and the policymakers who are governing change reckon with the power and sources of our behavior when it comes to health. Praise for Irrationality in Health Care “Hough does an extraordinary job of distilling the literature and providing key insights to help us understand how health care consumers and providers really behave, and how government can formulate better policy. A must-read for anyone interested in the burgeoning field of behavioral economics and age-old questions in health care.” —Thomas Rice, Distinguished Professor, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health “Hough explains and applies the emerging field of behavioral economics to patient and physician decision making, providing a rationale for seemingly irrational behavior, and its particular usefulness for designing health policies.” —Paul J. Feldstein, University of California, Irvine “Balancing rigor and policy relevance, Hough shows the application of behavioral economics to health policy in a most compelling way. I liked this book so much, I wish I had written it!” —Richard Scheffler, University of California, Berkeley

Sixth edition of the hugely successful, internationally recognised textbook on global public health and epidemiology, with 3 volumes comprehensively covering the scope, methods, and practice of the discipline

The field of behavioural economics can tell us a great deal about cognitive bias and unconscious decision-making, challenging the orthodox economic model whereby consumers make rational and informed choices. But it is in the arena of health that it perhaps offers individuals and governments the most value. In this important new book, the most pernicious health issues we face today are examined through a behavioral economic lens. It provides an essential and timely overview of how this growing field of study can reframe and offer solutions to some of the biggest health issues of our age. The book opens with an overview of the core theoretical concepts, after which each chapter assesses how behavioral economic research and practice can inform public policy across a range of health issues. Including chapters on tobacco, alcohol and drug use, physical activity, dietary intake, cancer screening and sexual health, the book integrates the key insights from the field to both developed and developing nations. Also asking important ethical questions around paternalism and informed choice, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers across psychology, economics and business and management, as well as public health professionals wishing for a concise overview of the role behavioral economics can potentially play in allowing people to live healthier lives.

The first decades of the twenty-first century have offered a remarkable shift in how policies are made as well as who designs them. Until this period, local, regional, and national policy advisors largely comprised economists, lawyers, and financial experts. But in an era when behavioral scientists are increasingly being asked to demonstrate the impact of their research, many are playing a much greater role in policy making across a range of sectors as a result. Written by a team of authors working across both academia and government, Behavioral Insights for Public Policy is the first textbook to fully examine how psychology can be applied to a range of public policy areas. It addresses a wide variety of topics from the origins of policy as well as major findings from behavioral economics and nudge theory, to large-scale applications of behavioral insights. The compilation is the first of its kind to broadly cover the underlying theory, history, major empirical examples, and practical applications to policy of nudges (or behavioral insights) for teaching and study in higher education. Featuring over 100 empirical examples of how behavioral insights are being used to address some of the most critical challenges faced globally, the book also includes a unique chapter from an organization actively implementing behavioral insights in policies along with various government institutions. Also featuring case studies looking at key policy issues, learning outcomes, a glossary of key terms, and an accompanying website, this important book will be essential reading for any student of applied psychology. It has also been produced for others interested in the topic from social, political, and economic sciences, as well as those in government looking for an overview of the key issues.

Policy-making in public health is highly complex, which is one reason why the behavioural turn is now playing a significant role in this field. Against this backdrop, this book aims to develop a theoretical understanding of how policymakers take up public health challenges and how policies change over the course of time. Accordingly, the book reveals policy-makers' underlying assumptions, which influence the way in which public policy seeks to promote the health status of citizens. In a second step, the book presents a typology of policy instruments and applies this to the field of health promotion. This typology introduces an option that adds behaviourally informed insights to the toolbox of political analysis. Empirical evidence of behavioural health policies can be found in various countries around the world, and the book presents both relevant country studies and examples from the supra- and international level. Finally, the book discusses the implications of the rise of behavioural health policies, proposes a specific concept of health citizenship and reviews state-citizen relations. The book is useful for academics from health-related disciplines, such as political science, sociology, and public health, as well as for policy-makers, practitioners and students.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Americans enjoyed better overall health than at any other time in the nation's history. Rapid advancements in medical technologies, breakthroughs in understanding the genetic underpinnings of health and ill health, improvements in the effectiveness and variety of pharmaceuticals, and other developments in biomedical research have helped develop cures for many illnesses and improve the lives of those with chronic diseases. By itself, however, biomedical research cannot address the most significant challenges to improving public health. Approximately half of all causes of mortality in the United States are linked to social and behavioral factors such as smoking, diet, alcohol use, sedentary lifestyle, and accidents. Yet less than five percent of the money spent annually on U.S. health care is devoted to reducing the risks of these preventable conditions. Behavioral and social interventions offer great promise, but as yet their potential has been relatively poorly tapped. Promoting Health identifies those promising areas of social science and behavioral research that may address public health needs. It includes 12 papersâ€"commissioned from some of the nation's leading expertsâ€"that review these issues in detail, and serves to assess whether the knowledge base of social and behavioral interventions has been useful, or could be useful, in the development of broader public health interventions.

Handbook of Behavioral Economics: Foundations and Applications presents the concepts and tools of behavioral economics. Its authors are all economists who share a belief that the objective of behavioral economics is to enrich, rather than to destroy or replace, standard economics. They provide authoritative perspectives on the value to economic inquiry of insights gained from psychology. Specific chapters in this first volume cover reference-dependent preferences, asset markets, household finance, corporate finance, public economics, industrial organization, and structural behavioural economics. This Handbook provides authoritative summaries by experts in respective subfields regarding where behavioral economics has been; what it has so far accomplished; and its promise for the future. This taking-stock is just what Behavioral Economics needs at this stage of its so-far successful career. Helps academic and non-academic economists understand recent, rapid changes in theoretical and empirical advances within behavioral economics Designed for economists already convinced of the benefits of behavioral economics and mainstream economists who feel threatened by new developments in behavioral economics Written for those who wish to become quickly acquainted with behavioral economics