February 19, 2020

Penn Collaboration Lands in Top 100 Proposals for MacArthur Foundation 100&Change Competition

A proposal spearheaded by the University of Pennsylvania has been named in the Top 100 in the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change competition, which offers a single $100 million grant to help solve one of the world’s most critical social challenges.

The collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics (CHIBE), the Ezintsha unit of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and Discovery Vitality (part of South Africa’s largest private insurance company) seeks to implement interventions that will help to end South Africa’s HIV epidemic. Specifically, their Top 100 proposal will implement proven behavioral interventions that will increase individuals’ utilization of highly effective, widely available HIV services and shut down HIV transmission.

“Our team brings together behavioral scientists and clinicians as well as public and private sector implementation specialists. Together we seek to implement compelling, low-cost behavioral interventions that will motivate people to seek the highly-effective health services that are so vital to ending the HIV epidemic.” said Harsha Thirumurthy, PhD, Associate Professor of Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and an Associate Director of CHIBE. “This is a “last mile” challenge that can be addressed with behavioral insights.”

Dr. Thirumurthy leads the collaboration at Penn along with Alison Buttenheim, PhD, MBA, Associate Professor of Health Policy in the Division of Health Policy and CHIBE Associate Director.

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