Nudging for Public Health

Why is it often so hard to be healthy? And how can we make healthy behaviours easier for everyone? Public health and behavioural insights (BI) are natural allies, when it comes to answering these questions — but practitioners and organizations still have to bring them together.

Join Karen Beckermann to learn how she applies BI in her public health work for the City of Toronto. She’ll discuss recent results in areas such as vaccination reporting and cancer prevention. More broadly, Karen will also share her experience getting new projects off the ground, encouraging organizational acceptance of trial-based evaluations, and expanding use of BI to tackle other pressing public health challenges.

Karen has extensive experience at Toronto Public Health working to address chronic and communicable diseases, from front-line responsibilities to overall planning and performance evaluation. She is currently the Associate Director for TPH’s Vaccine Preventable Diseases program. Her previous work experience includes research, primary care practice and nursing in Toronto, Montreal, Germany and Morocco. With a BSc in Biochemistry and an MSc (A) in Nursing, Karen continues learning and developing skills to satisfy her curiousity.

** NB: WE WILL SEND YOU THE ZOOM PASSWORD PRIOR TO THE MEETING. **

SCHEDULE:

6:00 PM: welcome and small talk!

6:15 PM - 7 PM: Karen's talk

7:00 - 7:15 PM: discussion, questions

WHAT'S BEHAVIOURAL DESIGN?

Behavioural design is, in a nutshell, a set of techniques and patterns you can use to change the way people behave and make decisions, drawn from the latest research on how people think and make choices. We are all almost certainly already using elements of behavioural design, but accidentally and without necessarily knowing how the techniques work. If we practice behavioural design more deliberately and thoughtfully, we can help increase the chances that our ideas will work.