Behavioural Science Workshop: Health and Behaviour

Workshop programme

10:00 - 10:30 Registration and welcome - Conny Wollbrant

10: 30 - 11:15 "Why people hate health economics." - Gustav Tinghög

11:15 - 12:00 "Understanding and overcoming barriers to organ donation" - Ronan O'Carroll

12:00 - 12:45 "Optimising the design of financial incentives for health behaviours using (behavioural) economics" - Marjon van der Pol

12:45 - 13:15 Lunch

13:15 - 13:45 "Measuring mental well-being in the workplace" - Alena Rogozhkina

13:45 - 14:15 "Improving Life after Death – Increasing Tissue Donation from the Emergency Department" - Susan Macmillan

14: 15 - 14:30 Break

14:30 - 15:15 "Unhealthy desires and self-control" - Leonhard Lades

15:15 - 16:00 Panel discussion and close

16:00 - 17:00 Knowledge exchange meeting

Titles and abstracts

Dr. Leonhard Lades, EPA Research Fellow in Behavioral Economics, UCD Behavioural Science and Policy Group

Unhealthy desires and self-control

This presentation aims to show that self-control can be an important contributor to people’s health. I argue that a better understanding of the differences in self-control across individuals and across situations can inform the design of behavioural health policies. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I show that individual differences in childhood self-control predict health outcomes in later life establishing the general importance of self-control. Second, I present several day reconstruction studies that explore the role of self-control for health-related behaviours in everyday life in order to better understand why self-control predicts health outcomes. Finally, I derive policy implications from these insights, discussing person-based interventions (such as self-control training) and situation-based interventions (such as modifications of the choice architecture) to promote healthy behaviour.

Prof. Marjon van der Pol, Professor of Health Economics and the Deputy Director of the Health Economics Research Unit, University of Aberdeen, Honorary Professor at the Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling.

Optimising the design of financial incentives for health behaviours using (behavioural) economics

The use of financial incentive schemes to encourage healthy behaviours such as smoking cessation, weight loss and physical activity continues to receive interest. However, the design of the incentive schemes does not always receive sufficient attention even though they can vary on several dimensions such as value, frequency, and sign (gain or loss). This presentation will discuss how the design of a financial incentive scheme can be optimised using (behavioural) economics. The case study is a financial incentive scheme for weight loss in obese men living in areas with high levels of disadvantage (Games of Stones study). Behavioural economics provides us with important insights as to how deviations from rationality impact on individuals’ behaviour. Loss aversion and the endowment effect were used to optimise the design of the incentive scheme. It is also argued that designing an incentive scheme in line with individuals’ preferences will increase uptake and engagement. An online survey was conducted with a representative sample of 1,045 obese men in the UK. The survey includes a Discrete Choice Experiment which presents men with choices between different incentive designs in terms of overall value of the incentive and different distributions of the incentive over 12 months. The scheme was tested in a feasibility trial (N=105) and qualitative interviews were used to better understand whether the design of the financial incentives was successful

Susan Macmillan, Clinical Development Fellow, NHS Forth valley

Improving Life after Death – Increasing Tissue Donation from the Emergency Department

Tissue donation is a form of organ donation. Tissues such as corneas, heart valves, skin and tendons can be donated after circulatory death and offer both life enhancing and life saving opportunities for many patients. Many more patients are eligible for tissue donation than whole organ donation and yet there is a national shortage of tissues. This Quality Improvement Project was conducted by a junior doctor working in Forth Valley Royal Hospital Emergency Department. It focused on improving the referral rate of potential tissue donors. Referring a deceased patient to the tissue donor co-ordinator is the crucial first step in tissue donation. Multiple staff education approaches, departmental posters and novel prompt materials were developed during the project. The change in staff culture and practice resulted in a substantial improvement in referrals numbers and a doubling of corneal donations from the hospital. This project has shown great potential to enhance referral rates and the methods used could be readily applied in other Emergency Departments and hospital wards. Routine consideration of eligibility for tissue donation will not only benefit those patients awaiting tissues for transplant but will achieve patient centred care, even after death.

Alena Rogozhkina, Founder of Sonas - Behavioural Science for Better Working Lives

Measuring mental well-being in the workplace

Any change management initiative in the workplace includes challenges to identify real triggers that create resistance, anxiety and stress in the workplace. Cognitive pressure disorders often begin with work overload and confusion – two factors which are quite common in a post-merger or rapid business growth environment. This often results in poor quality of sleep, sluggish feeling, apathy and massively declined individual performance. It is areal challenge though to understand true reasons why employees could feel unhappy or unsatisfied and how to improve the situation. I will present CASPER - our innovative digital solution to measure and evaluate mental well-being and productivity in the workplace beyond surveys. Deploying both Experience-Sampling Methodology (ESM) and advanced tech, we are developing an insightful evidence-based platform enabling to envision overall level of mental well-being and productivity as well as suggestions to inform an effective workplace well-being strategy. On the other hand, employees will have an intelligent dashboard to reflect on their own mental well-being to learn the ways to deal with certain emotions and make better decisions through a working day.

Associate Prof. Gustav Tinghög, Director of Judgment, Emotion, Decision, Intuition Lab, ​Linköping University

Why people hate health economics

Most people dislike the idea of “health economists” having influence on medical decision making and who gets what when it comes to health care. Health economics is often thought of as inhumane, promoting efficiency at the expense of more profound moral values, such as equality and need. The fact that allocations solely based on cost-effectiveness are unlikely to be compatible with public views has been widely established. For an economist this can be hard to understand, why is not the quest to maximise the value for money something that strikes a chord with the general public? In my presentation I will talk about the role of emotions and morals in health care priority setting and how this can lead to scope neglect and decision avoidance.

Professor Ronan O'Carroll, Centre for Health and Behaviour Change, University of Stirling

Understanding and overcoming barriers to organ donation

There is an insufficient supply of donor organs to meet the demand for organ transplantations worldwide. There is therefore an urgent need to identify and overcome the barriers to registration. In this talk I will review the evidence regarding barriers to people registering as posthumous organ donors. I will argue that emotional factors play a significant role. In order to increase organ donor behavior you can either attempt to (a) target the behavior of individuals or (b) try and change organ donation systems/legislation. I will review interventions where we attempted to overcome these barriers at the individual level and also review the evidence for legislative change e.g. “opt-in” versus “opt-out” schemes.

Knowledge exchange meeting

To further support knowledge exchange and interaction between researchers, practitioners and policy makers, we are arranging a knowledge exchange network meeting to explore possibilities of deepened collaboration

Speaker dinner

The speaker dinner will take place in the Meadowpark located near the University entrance (by invitation)