CHIBE in the News

Nov 10 2021
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ABC Action News: COVID-19 vaccine incentives offered for children

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From ABC Action News: Districts are offering incentives like gift cards, tickets to sporting events and amusement parks, and raffle entries for things like scholarships and bigger prizes. Regardless of how convincing children can be, economics professor Iwan Barankay says the evidence is stacking up that these sorts of incentives don’t really improve vaccine rates much. He says it’s more likely schools have COVID-19 money to spend and will argue if it helps even a few, it’s worth it. Barankay believes two other factors will play more of a role in swaying families to vaccinate children. He says the motivation…

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Nov 09 2021
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Mirage News: Automated Texting System Saved Lives Weekly During First COVID Surge

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From Mirage News: A life was saved twice a week by an automated text messaging system during the fraught early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and, overall, the patients who enrolled in that system were 68 percent less likely to die than those not using it. These insights about Penn Medicine’s COVID Watch – a system designed to monitor COVID-19 outpatients using automated texts and then escalate those with concerning conditions to a small team of health care providers – were published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The COVID Watch team plans to see if the approach, which had originally…

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Nov 08 2021
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WebMD Health News: Leaked Documents Show Facebook Put Profit Before Public Good

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From WebMD Health News: A leaked trove of papers from inside Facebook shows that the social media giant’s internal research uncovered a host of problems on the platform related to public health and other issues, but did virtually nothing about it. The files were leaked by a whistleblower, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, who shared tens of thousands of documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Congress, and a consortium of news organizations. She has since testified before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and European lawmakers. “Large organizations that have influence and access to lots of people need…

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Nov 05 2021
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Penn Today: Access to HIV self-tests in Kenya

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From Penn Today: World AIDS Day has been held every Dec. 1 since 1988, an opportunity for people across the globe to unite in the fight against HIV, to show support for people living with HIV, and to remember those who have died from an AIDS-related illness. Marking the day, Penn Today features new research led by Harsha Thirumurthy, associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine and co-director of the Penn Development Research Initiative. Published in The Lancet HIV, the study by Thirumurthy and co-authors examined the effect on male partner testing, couples testing, and HIV incidence in Kenya by…

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Nov 05 2021
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TIME Magazine: Why Schools Are Paying Kids to Get Vaccinated

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From TIME:  Emily Largent, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, says “small, guaranteed incentives” tend to work better than big prizes that aren’t guaranteed, like lotteries. She notes that $100 is unlikely to sway someone who is opposed to vaccines, but it could help ease logistical barriers to vaccination, including transportation costs or time off from work. “To the extent that offering that small cash incentive helps overcome those barriers, it can be really helpful for getting people who are open to being vaccinated across the line and removing barriers…

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Nov 02 2021
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The Daily Pennsylvanian: Penn study finds older adults, loved ones have similar response to Alzheimer’s risk diagnosis

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From The Daily Pennsylvanian: A Penn Medicine study found that both older adults and their loved ones had similar responses to news of the risk of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and conducted by researchers from the Penn Memory Center, studied the implications of older adults and their loved ones receiving news of their potential risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers tested cognitively unimpaired adults for the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and found that many of the patients’ loved ones were negatively impacted when they learned about a loved one’s risk diagnosis, the…

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Nov 01 2021
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The Washington Post: Opinion: Children are suffering from gun violence — even if it’s blocks away from their home

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From The Washington Post: In our hometown of Philadelphia, 2021 is on pace to be the most violent year in the city’s history, with more than 1,800 people, including more than 170 children under age 18, killed or injured by a gun since January. These numbers are staggering, but they tell only part of the story. Each of these 1,800 victims has family members, neighbors and friends who have also been affected. At one pediatric primary care clinic in West Philadelphia, 70 percent of patients — all of them children or young adults — had one or more shootings on their…

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Oct 29 2021
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Yahoo Finance: Why cash incentives and lotteries for COVID-19 vaccinations failed?

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From Yahoo! Money: When covid-19 vaccines were first rolled out in the US, government officials and corporations spent months using various tactics to convince the hesitant, from paying them to get their shot to giving them free donuts. The number of unvaccinated adults in the US, which stands at around 80.2 million despite wide vaccine availability, was already evidence of the limited success of these kinds of measures. Now research confirms it. A couple of papers published in recent days found that neither cash payments nor lottery tickets moved vaccine-reticent Americans to get the jab. One lesson for policymakers, who spent months trying…

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Oct 26 2021
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AAMC: The cost of being unvaccinated is rising — will people be willing to pay the price?

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From AAMC: Despite the quick approval of safe, highly effective COVID-19 vaccines, vaccination rates in the United States have stagnated over the past few months — with just 69% of adults fully vaccinated as of mid-October. Now, a growing number of employers, governments, and private businesses are requiring vaccination as a condition of employment, imposing financial penalties for those who remain unvaccinated, and excluding unvaccinated individuals from being able to go to restaurants, gyms, concerts, and other large gatherings. A very small number of people have resisted vaccine mandates. ESPN reporter Allison Williams recently made headlines for giving up her job because she refused to get vaccinated….

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Oct 26 2021
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UNC University Communications: COVID-19 vaccine incentive program pays off

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From UNC University Communications: The incentive study guaranteed a $25 card to adults who either received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine or drove someone to providers participating in the pilot program. The program distributed 2,890 cards to vaccine recipients and 1,374 to drivers. The $25 Summer Card program switched to providing $100 cards after this evaluation was conducted, and data on the $100 Summer Card program are not included in the authors’ review. “Providing guaranteed small financial incentives is a promising strategy to increase COVID-19 vaccination uptake,” said Charlene Wong, the chief health policy officer for COVID-19 at the…

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