Behavioral Economics and Public Health

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.

Christina A. Roberto, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Social & Behavioral Sciences and Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a psychologist and epidemiologist whose research aims to identify, understand, and alter the environmental and social forces that promote unhealthy eating behaviors linked to obesity and eating disorders. In her work, she draws upon the fields of psychology, behavioral economics, marketing, and public health to answer research questions that can provide policymakers and institutions with science-based guidance.

Ichiro Kawachi, MD, PhD, is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he has taught since 1992. He has previously coedited Social Epidemiology, Neighborhoods and Health, Globalization and Health, and the Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice, all published by Oxford University Press. Kawachi lectures about social epidemiology through the Harvard University Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform, edX. His course, "Health and Society" (PHx 201), is a version of the class that he has taught for twenty years at Harvard. In 2013-1014, 35,000 students from all over the world were enrolled in the MOOC course.

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Behavioral Economics and Public Health
Christina A. Roberto and Ichiro Kawachi

Chapter 2: Intertemporal Choices for Health
Justin S. White and William H. Dow

Chapter 3: Maintenance of Healthy Behaviors: Forming and Changing Habits
Dennis Rünger and Wendy Wood

Chapter 4: Emotions and Health Decision-Making: Extending the Appraisal Tendency Framework to Improve Health and Health Care
Rebecca Ferrer, William Klein, Jennifer Lerner, Valerie Reyna, and Dacher Keltner

Chapter 5: Social Norms, Beliefs, and Health
Brent McFerran

Chapter 6: Communicating for action: the importance of memorability and actionability
Jason Riis and Rebecca K. Ratner

Chapter 7:Nudging Individuals Toward Healthier Food Choices with the 4Ps Framework for Behavior Change
Zoë Chance, Ravi Dhar, Michelle Hatzis, and Kim Huskey

Chapter 8: Incentivizing Health Behaviors
Kristina Lewis and Jason Block

Chapter 9: Slim By Design: Moving from Can't to CAN
Brian Wansink

Chapter 10: Applying Behavioural Economics in a Health Policy Context: Dispatches from the front lines
Michael Sanders and Michael Hallsworth

Chapter 11: From Choice Architecture to Policy Infrastructure: Multi-Level Theory and the Political Economy of Health Behaviors
Frederick J. Zimmerman