Making it Easier to do the Right Thing
By Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick
Twitter: @drnic1
Host of Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist – #TheIncrementalist
Behavioral Health for Positive Impact
Now on demand, I am talking to Matt Wallaert (@mattwallaert), Chief Behavioral Officer at Clover Health. I have listened to Matt on a few occasions, most recently at the FitBit Captivate event in Chicago so I was excited to get to talk to him one on one.
Matt plays an unusual and atypical role in Clover Health – he is their Chief Behavioral Officer, a title and role that is not commonly found. He is a Social Psychologist who focuses on Judgement and Decision Making and is most well known for applying behavioral science to practical problems.
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We explore behavioral health influences and how we can create interventions that will have a positive impact. How do we create incremental steps and test these and then roll out of programs to have a positive impact on health? He wanted to have an impact and wanted to make things better for people and over the course of his career has managed to do so in many places but is now focused on healthcare and specifically personal health. There’s a recurring theme in many of my INcremental interviews and I heard it again from Matt:
Assume you are going to fail
As Matt puts it – “don’t set up a durable process – for example, if you are doing a mailing do that yourself vs getting your marketing department to create the mailing”. Then head out to the next step – a Test. It is not hard to find behavioral changes that work – but that’s not the only requirement as the change has to work well enough and are scalable enough that you really want to roll them out widely.
Incremental Step to Behavioral Health
It’s not just finding good behavioral changes but rather things that are worthwhile and scalable.
“If behavior is your outcome and science is your method – then you are a behavioral scientist”
As Matt says we have to make it easier to do the right thing and not blame individual choices and health behaviors when we make poor health, decisions. Listen in to find out why there are significant cultural differences in flu vaccination take up rates and what incremental steps can be taken to improve on that and hear why it is important not to blame people for poor health behaviors. Learn how they are behaving like Netflix or Pandora that can can match you to the right videos or music we should be able to match you to the right doctor.
About the Show
For years Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick, has served as a voice on the impact of new technologies on healthcare, earning a reputation as a leading authority on where the future of medicine is going. Combining powers of observation and real world experience, Dr. Nick has seen many predictions come true and makes the case that innovations in healthcare can be accomplished incrementally, not just by moonshot events. Tune in to hear Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist and his guests discuss what the future of healthcare looks like, how we will get there, and what it will take to improve healthcare for all.
This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.
