CHIBE hosts 2025 Roybal Retreat

CHIBE hosted its annual Roybal Retreat at Skytop Lodge from October 13-14, 2025, gathering 118 faculty and staff together to discuss their latest research and participate in team-building activities.

Opening Remarks: CHIBE Director Dr. Kevin Volpp

Dr. Kevin Volpp shared highlights from the year, including research achievements, awards, the CHIBE annual report, and CHIBE’s Research Support offerings. He also shared about two success stories of how CHIBE affiliates have partnered with external organizations (see HMSA and CVS partnership stories here).

He then introduced the retreat keynote speaker, Dr. Elizabeth Linos, the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor for Public Policy and Management, and Faculty Director of The People Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Elizabeth Linos

In her keynote, Dr. Linos challenged the idea that evidence-based policymaking is just about getting research into the hands of decision-makers. She argued that the problem isn’t a transfer of information from researcher to policymaker; instead, it’s a series of behavioral and organizational hurdles or pain points (such as: who decides what questions we study? How does a policymaker translate findings into their own context? How can systems and processes be adapted to use new evidence?) She encouraged the audience to look at each step of the process as its own behavioral challenge.

Dr. Linos outlined 3 ways to improve the connection between new evidence created by researchers and policymakers:

1) making evidence useful
2) making evidence usable
3) making evidence used

On this last point, Dr. Linos talked about how even when trials are successful, adoption of the intervention can be limited. In one study, only ~27% of successful interventions were adopted in U.S. city governments 5 years later. The strongest predictor of adoption: whether the intervention built on existing processes or infrastructure (for example: tweaking the language in a pre-existing letter is easier to implement than creating a whole new system).

Key Takeaways from Dr. Linos

Ask decision-makers what keeps them up at night.
Reframe evidence-based policymaking as a series of behavioral challenges.
Continue testing strategies that help evidence stick, and consider how to make interventions that scale and integrate into existing processes.

Other Activities at Retreat

The retreat featured an AI panel discussion with Dr. Srinath Adusumalli, Mohan Balachandran, MA, MS; Dr. Hamsa Bastani, and Dr. Shivan Mehta with moderator Hannah Maynard, MPH.
CHIBE’s Scientific Director Dr. Alison Buttenheim and Laurel Adams, MBA, led a workshop on incorporating design strategy into behavioral science research.
CHIBE faculty and staff also took advantage of the Poconos landscape with a morning hike and zip-lining activity.

Closing Reflections from Dr. Kit Delgado

Dr. Kit Delgado closed the event with thanks to all the retreat volunteers, steering committee members, and organizers (Samatha Fellman and Joelle Friedman, MPA) — as well as Dr. Volpp for making the gathering possible. He reflected on the center’s growth from a small group of about 15 people at the first retreat to a vibrant community of more than 100.

He also noted the increasing sophistication of the center’s work, lauded the Joint Research Practices’ efforts to improve how CHIBE conducts research, and underscored the growing focus on “designing the right thing—and designing things right,” pointing to the new Design Core and the fusion of behavioral science and design strategy.

Dr. Delgado also discussed how attendees shared their excitement and concerns with AI at the retreat. He suggested that we not forget about the fundamentals.

“At the end of the day, AI is this bright, shiny tool, right? But it’s often a solution looking for a problem,” Dr. Delgado said. “I would say, let’s go back to the fundamentals and what Elizabeth Linos was saying — start with a problem that keeps people up at night and then solve for that.”