Unveiling the CHIBE Annual Report 2019-2020
The Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) is pleased to share our 2019-2020 Annual Report.
In this report, you’ll find some of our top publications and news articles from the year, information about our COVID-19 research and projects, impact stories, CHIBE signature programs, awards, funding portfolio, partners, and CHIBE leadership, and our external and internal advisory boards.
Read CHIBE Director Kevin Volpp’s opening letter below.
2020 will be a year we never forget. In addition to the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is also facing a long-overdue reckoning of its current and historical treatment of Black Americans.
Our team at CHIBE recognizes the need for self-reflection, education, and enduring work toward building and sustaining an anti-racist culture within our ranks. In addition, recognizing our institutional power and collective talents and resources, we are reflecting on how to use our research to remake the status quo and improve population health, especially among the Black Americans who have suffered from racist policies and systems. We can do more and we can do better — and we will.
We also recognize COVID-19’s societal health and economic impacts this year. We are proud that our faculty has worked hard to respond, creating numerous programs locally and nationally, generating scholarship, and providing thought leadership to guide the pandemic response worldwide. On pages 10 and 11 of this report, you will see some of the ways in which our faculty and staff have contributed, through the creation of models to support COVID-19 patient care, through the development of public health prevention initiatives, in providing guidance to health systems, and in educating the public through media and social media communications.
Meanwhile, CHIBE teams continue to apply behavioral economic strategies to encourage healthy food choices, reduce cardiovascular disease risk, increase exercise, and other important population health challenges. Our global health work, led by CHIBE Associate Directors Harsha Thirumurthy, PhD, and Alison Buttenheim, PhD, MBA, received significant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to leverage behavioral insights to help end the world’s largest HIV epidemic in South Africa (see pages 8-9 of this report). In all of our work, we seek opportunities to advance the science of behavior change to improve health, particularly for populations and communities most impacted by systemic racism and social injustice.
We thank you for your continued support, interest, and contributions.
Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD
Director, CHIBE
Founders President’s Distinguished Professor, Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania