CME (Continuing Medical Education), CPE (Continuing Professional Education), CNE (Continuing Nursing Education) points may be awarded pending approval
MORNING SESSIONS:
Introduction to Behavioral Economics Concepts SOLD OUT – please contact us if you want to be added to the waiting list
This workshop will cover the basic principles of behavioral economics for those without prior background in the field. Course materials will draw on examples from multiple fields including health and finance. Practical applications of behavioral economics and their implications will be reviewed. Different types of "nudge" interventions will be introduced and their strengths limitations and feasibility discussed.
Workshop Leader: Angela Hung
Angela Hung received her Ph.D. in Social Science from the California Institute of Technology, and is Director of the Center for Financial and Economic Decision Making (CFED) and a Senior Economist at RAND. She is associate director for the Roybal Center for Decision Making to Improve Health and Financial Independence in Old Age. She was previously an assistant professor of economics and public policy at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University and an affiliate of the Carnegie Mellon Center for Behavioral Decision Research. She has over 15 years experience in experiment, survey, and focus group design in studying individual decisionmaking. Her work focuses on how people collect and use financial information and how successfully they match their financial decisions to their interests and goals. Her work on financial literacy and financial decisionmaking has been sponsored by agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the DOL, the Department of the Treasury, and the National Institute on Aging. She was the principal investigator (PI) on a project for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that examined the differences between broker-dealers and investment advisers and that explored investors’ understanding of these differences through the use of focus groups and surveys. For the DOL, she has led several projects on retirement investment decisionmaking that use primary data collection through experiments, surveys, and focus groups, including projects on the effects of fees on investment portfolio allocation, the relationship between financial literacy and retirement savings and decumluation, and the effect of advice on investment portfolio allocation. She is currently leading projects for the DOL on conflicts of interest in financial advising and on developing and testing materials to be used in financial statements.
Introduction to Design Thinking
Design thinking is well-established within the public sector as a way of better understanding and responding to increasing and diverse citizen needs. Darren Menachemson (Australia) and Erin Entrekin (Singapore) of ThinkPlace will take participants through a hands-on introduction to design thinking methodology, tools and techniques, and share insights and reflections from their consulting experience in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and in development contexts.
Workshop leader: Darren Menachemson/Erin Entrekin (ThinkPlace, Singapore).
Darren Menachemson is a Principal at ThinkPlace’s Australian studio, a design consultancy focused on design for public value. He has worked on many of Australia’s largest government programs, designing systemic change in a wide range of systems, including health care, social services, border protection, renewable energy, taxation, law enforcement and international aid. Darren’s specialty is applying design thinking and systems thinking to healthcare challenges. His focus is on helping healthcare deliverers innovate and on creating systemic, human-centred health experiences. Topics of particular interest include areas such as service design, research translation, electronic health records and setting strategic direction for new human health programs and projects. Darren has significant experience in developing strategies, service architectures, enterprise systems, conducting ethnographic research, and integrating digital design into service delivery. He operates as an adviser and facilitator to design teams and boards, and as a senior design thinking practitioner and service architect on programs of local and national significance. Darren is Executive Director of the ThinkPlace Foundation, which delivers healthcare and financial inclusion innovation in the developing world.
Erin Entrekin is the Executive Director of ThinkPlace’s Singapore studio, a design consultancy focused on design for public value. Erin is an experienced design leader and practitioner who has delivered successful public sector design projects in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Erin’s expertise spans our design offerings and sectors. Her passion is designing innovative and human-centred approaches to regulation, compliance and enforcement that balance a great experience for those who want to do the right thing with an effective outcome and efficiency in delivery for government. She is also interested in the measurement and evaluation of design impact, the integration of behavioural insights into public sector approaches, and the design and use of stories to lead and support change. Prior to joining ThinkPlace in 2012, Erin spent over a decade in the Australian public sector, including the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Parliament of Australia working in service delivery, coordination and policy roles.
Introduction to Program Evaluation - Process, Impact and Cost-Effectiveness SOLD OUT – please contact us if you want to be added to the waiting list
This workshop is aimed at policy makers and practitioners with an interest in the monitoring and evaluation of programs that incorporate insights from behavioral economics. The workshop will first review the basics of program evaluation, focusing in particular on the theoretical and practical aspects of impact evaluation. Drawing on real-world case studies from health and financial capability programs in a variety of international settings, the training will cover both (a) measures and methods appropriate for the testing and evaluation of interventions based on behavioral economics (b) ways to use behavioral economics to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of evolution itself.
Workshop leader: Joanne Yoong (Center for Economic and Social Research, University of Southern California)
Joanne Yoong is the Director of CESR East, as well as Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health Research at the the National University of Singapore.
AFTERNOON SESSIONS:
Design and Behavioural Economics in Policy Making SOLD OUT – please contact us if you want to be added to the waiting list
Policymakers are increasingly seeking new ways to develop robust, effective policy responses to wicked challenges, such as health, ageing, security and environmental challenges. Both design and behavioural economics have been applied by policymakers to design ‘nudges’, whether to increase voluntary compliance in regulatory systems or promote desired behaviours in health and transport systems. Darren Menachemson (Australia) and Erin Entrekin (Singapore) will share their experiences in working with policymakers to apply design and behavioural economics in public policy making and administration, and the challenges and opportunities in these new ways of approaching old problems.
Workshop leader: Darren Menachemson/Erin Entrekin (ThinkPlace, Singapore)
Darren Menachemson is a Principal at ThinkPlace’s Australian studio, a design consultancy focused on design for public value. He has worked on many of Australia’s largest government programs, designing systemic change in a wide range of systems, including health care, social services, border protection, renewable energy, taxation, law enforcement and international aid. Darren’s specialty is applying design thinking and systems thinking to healthcare challenges. His focus is on helping healthcare deliverers innovate and on creating systemic, human-centred health experiences. Topics of particular interest include areas such as service design, research translation, electronic health records and setting strategic direction for new human health programs and projects. Darren has significant experience in developing strategies, service architectures, enterprise systems, conducting ethnographic research, and integrating digital design into service delivery. He operates as an adviser and facilitator to design teams and boards, and as a senior design thinking practitioner and service architect on programs of local and national significance. Darren is Executive Director of the ThinkPlace Foundation, which delivers healthcare and financial inclusion innovation in the developing world.
Erin Entrekin is the Executive Director of ThinkPlace’s Singapore studio, a design consultancy focused on design for public value. Erin is an experienced design leader and practitioner who has delivered successful public sector design projects in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Erin’s expertise spans our design offerings and sectors. Her passion is designing innovative and human-centred approaches to regulation, compliance and enforcement that balance a great experience for those who want to do the right thing with an effective outcome and efficiency in delivery for government. She is also interested in the measurement and evaluation of design impact, the integration of behavioural insights into public sector approaches, and the design and use of stories to lead and support change. Prior to joining ThinkPlace in 2012, Erin spent over a decade in the Australian public sector, including the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Parliament of Australia working in service delivery, coordination and policy roles.
Genetics and Behavior: Challenges, Recent Findings, and Policy Relevance
As measuring genetic variation across individuals becomes increasingly inexpensive, there will be an explosion of findings relating genetic variation across individuals to behavior over the next few years. The objective of this workshop is to explore how genetic variation may lead to variation in individuals' behavior, how such knowledge will affect research in the social sciences, and what it does and does not imply for policymaking. The workshop will discuss some of the challenges that have slowed research in the genetics of behavioral traits, some of the recent advances that have overcome these challenges, and what further advances can be anticipated. The focus will be on the appropriate interpretation (and common misinterpretations) of findings about the genetics of behavioral traits, and what the appropriate interpretation means for policy relevance.
Workshop Leader: Dan Benjamin (Center for Economic and Social Research, University of Southern California)
Dan Benjamin is an Associate Professor (Research) of Economics at CESR at USC. His research is in behavioral economics (which incorporates ideas and methods from psychology into economic analysis) and genoeconomics (which incorporates genetic data into economics). Some current research topics include understanding errors people make in statistical reasoning; exploring how best to use survey measures of subjective well-being (such as happiness and life satisfaction) to track national well-being and evaluate policies; and identifying genetic variants associated with outcomes such as educational attainment and subjective well-being. Other ongoing work addresses how economic behavior relates to cognitive ability and social identity (ethnicity, race, gender, and religion). Dan received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2006.
Behavioral Economics: Insights for Health SOLD OUT – please contact us if you want to be added to the waiting list
There has been an increased interest in using insights from behavioral economics in the health field, including from policymakers and practitioners. The objective of this workshop is to explore several key themes of behavioral economics, such as limited attention, time discounting, social preferences, and the role of incentives. The workshop will include a discussion of the results of field experiments that have identified interventions that drive behavior change in the health domain, with a focus on food decision-making. Overall, the goal is to demonstrate how knowledge of behavioral economics can be leveraged to design large-scale public health interventions and achieve policy goals.
Workshop Leader: Anya Samek
Anya Samek is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at the University of Chicago. Anya received her Ph.D. in Economics from Purdue University in 2010 and was a Griffin Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago in 2010-2012. Anya's work focuses on using behavioral insights and experimental methods to improve decision-making in areas of health, financial literacy, and education. Much of her work focuses on using incentives and information to nudge decision-making surrounding food choice, both in school lunchrooms (with kids) and in grocery stores (with adults). Anya also worked on a field experiment with over 2,000 children in 2010-2014, which explored the impact of early childhood education on educational outcomes and preference formation in low income communities in the U.S.