Kevin G.M. Volpp
University of Pennsylvania · Rehabilitation Medicine
Active 1990–2026
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About
Kevin G.M. Volpp, MD, Ph.D., is a Professor of Medicine in Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine and a Founding Director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) at the University of Pennsylvania. He also serves as Division Chief of Health Policy for the Department of Medical Ethics and Policy and holds the title of the Founders President’s Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine and Health Care Management at the Wharton School. Dr. Volpp's work focuses on developing and testing innovative applications of behavioral economics to improve patient health behavior and enhance value in the health system by influencing provider performance. He has led CHIBE since its inception, transforming it into a major entity involving more than 90 faculty members and trainees across the University of Pennsylvania, and it was one of the two original NIH Centers nationally dedicated to behavioral economics and health. His research has been recognized through numerous awards, including the Matilda White Riley Award by the NIH Office of Social and Behavioral Science, the John Eisenberg Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine, and the Distinguished Investigator Award from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science. Dr. Volpp has secured over $70 million in funding for projects with employers, insurers, health systems, and consumer companies, testing behavioral economic strategies to…
Research topics
- Medicine
- Nursing
- Internal medicine
- Computer Science
- Psychology
- Environmental health
- Social psychology
- Family medicine
- Physical therapy
- Virology
Selected publications
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 348 citations
= 47,306) testing 19 nudges delivered to patients via text message and designed to boost adoption of the influenza vaccine. Our findings suggest that text messages sent prior to a primary care visit can boost vaccination rates by an average of 5%. Overall, interventions performed better when they were 1) framed as reminders to get flu shots that were already reserved for the patient and 2) congruent with the sort of communications patients expected to receive from their healthcare provider (i.e.…
Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science
Nature · 2021 · 254 citations
A 680,000-person megastudy of nudges to encourage vaccination in pharmacies
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 191 citations
Encouraging vaccination is a pressing policy problem. To assess whether text-based reminders can encourage pharmacy vaccination and what kinds of messages work best, we conducted a megastudy. We randomly assigned 689,693 Walmart pharmacy patients to receive one of 22 different text reminders using a variety of different behavioral science principles to nudge flu vaccination or to a business-as-usual control condition that received no messages. We found that the reminder texts that we tested incr…
Effectiveness and Ethics of Incentives for Research Participation
JAMA Internal Medicine · 2021 · 77 citations
Importance: Incentivizing research participation is controversial and variably regulated because of uncertainty regarding whether financial incentives serve as undue inducements by diminishing peoples' sensitivity to research risks or unjust inducements by preferentially increasing enrollment among underserved individuals. Objective: To determine whether incentives improve enrollment in real randomized clinical trials (RCTs) or serve as undue or unjust inducements. Design, Setting, and Participa…
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021 · 66 citations
Recent grants
NIH · $1.6M · 2009
Comparative effectiveness of process and outcomes incentives for lipid management
NIH · $3.9M · 2014–2020
University of Pennsylvania Prevention Research Center
NIH · $8.7M · 2014–2019
Frequent coauthors
- 357 shared
David A. Asch
- 260 shared
Jingsan Zhu
University of Pennsylvania
- 225 shared
Ezekiel Emanuel
- 218 shared
Allan S. Detsky
University of California, Los Angeles
- 212 shared
Diggs Sledge
Perspectives Charter School
- 212 shared
Gwenn Gregg
Perspectives Charter School
- 212 shared
Joy Farrell
Perspectives Charter School
- 212 shared
Carmina Conley
Perspectives Charter School
Awards & honors
- Matilda White Riley Award by the Office of Social and Behavi…
- John Eisenberg Award from the Society of General Internal Me…
- Association for Clinical and Translational Science Distingui…
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