Penn CMU Roybal P30 Center on Behavioral Economics and Health Symposium

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We are proposing an application to support the Penn CMU Roybal P30 Center on Behavioral Economics and Health Symposium to be held spring 2012 at the University of Pennsylvania. This initiative is motivated by the continued rise in health care costs and growing concern about the consequences of health related behaviors, including high rates of obesity, smoking, and medication non-adherence. In addition, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will increase the proportion of health insurance premiums that can be allocated to outcome-based financial incentives to at least 30%. All of these factors combine to increase interest in the use of behavioral economics as a tool to improving health behavior, and there are great opportunities to do innovative work in this area that could greatly affect health policy. The overall specific aim of the symposium is to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to discuss the many issues around behavioral economics and health and to identify new research directions which will help to catalyze more rapid development of the field by efficiently providing a mechanism for leading scholars to update each other about their work and to help with identification of clear gaps and directions which may be most promising. Specifically, we will [1] increase communication between research groups and institutions~ [2] communicate and disseminate new findings~ and [3] Bring together senior and junior researchers as a way to encourage seeking new research opportunities and collaborations. We expect 50 attendees, representing scholars, policy analysts, and practitioners from psychology, economics, law and medicine around the United States. Different from a typical conference format, we will not have attendees give formal presentations. Instead, we have opted for a more interactive format in which we will have small teams of attendees give group presentations. Attendees will be grouped according to research interest and instructed to develop a brief presentation highlighting~ 1) most important studies they or others have done~ and 2) what they see as the biggest questions in their area. Time will be allotted during the meeting for groups to convene and then each team will give a group presentation and lead a panel discussion with the audience. We believe that this format will maximize the amount of interaction among the attendees as well as allow for efficient dissemination of the most important research advances and outstanding questions. Furthermore, we will invite several key leaders from fields where behavioral economic interventions could make a big difference in population health (e.g., pharmacy benefits managers and employers) to allow for perspective on real-world applications of these interventions. Our main dissemination piece will be an Issue Brief which will translate key findings from the symposium into a policy-relevant newsletter that will be distributed to more than 4,000 policy and opinion leaders nationally. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The emerging field of behavioral economics provides a cutting edge solution to improve health behavior and contain health care costs. Currently, the field is at a nascent point where there are small pockets of scholars at a number of different institutions. Support to bring these scholars together to talk through the many issues and to identify new directions for the field will help to catalyze more rapid development of the field by making it clear to people what is known and which directions may be most promising in a way that will be much more efficient than having each researcher figure this out on his/her own.