Behavioral Policy & Public Health

Applications of behavioral insights are expanding rapidly across civic, medical, social, corporate, educational, and economic professions. This class covers the underlying theories for behavioral insights, using scientific and real-world examples of applications from multiple disciplines and locations. The course will also cover methods for behavioral implementation and evaluation, focusing particularly on healthcare policy perspectives. Students will learn a broad range of strategies through a highly interactive format, taught partially in a classroom setting in addition to remote asynchronous and synchronous sessions. Students will gain experience designing and developing their own evidence- based behavioral interventions as a part of a semester-long project.

The course is taught in three phases. The first phase will introduce fundamentals of behavioral science and evidence-based policy. Students will then spend the majority of the course on examples of behavioral insights such as nudges in practice, in a healthcare context and beyond. The course will end with sessions on practical applications, where students will learn to identify appropriate situations for behavioral interventions and produce a final project in a chosen context.