Behavioral strategies to promote a national COVID-19 vaccine program
National efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine at “warp speed” are beginning to yield a safe and effective vaccine. But this important milestone is only the first step in an equally important challenge: getting a majority of the U.S. public vaccinated.
A pharmacist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania draws up a COVID-19 vaccine dose. Diluted COVID-19 vaccines can only be kept at room-temperature for six hours before they expire. (Image: Dan Burke)
Authors of a viewpoint article in the Journal of the American Medical Association share five strategies and implementation considerations, informed by insights from behavioral science, for a national COVID-19 vaccine promotion program.
“The U.S. needs a national strategy for the promotion of COVID-19 vaccines that unites the urgency and commitment of Operation Warp Speed with innovative behavioral science and social marketing approaches to increase COVID-19 vaccine confidence and acceptance in diverse populations,” says senior author Alison M. Buttenheim, the Patricia Bleznak Silverstein and the Howard A. Silverstein Term Endowed Professorship in Global Women’s Health at Penn’s School of Nursing.
The recommendations from Buttenheim and co-authors George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University and Kevin Volpp, the Founders President’s Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine and Health Care Management at the Wharton School, include:
Make the vaccine free and easily accessible.
Make access to valued settings conditional on getting vaccinated.
Use public endorsements from trusted leaders to increase uptake.
Provide priority access to people who sign up to get vaccinated before vaccines are widely available.
Transform individual vaccination decisions into a public act.
Novel plant-based approach to a better, cheaper GLP-1 delivery system
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell investigates the use of a lettuce-based, plant-encapsulated delivery platform as a new oral delivery of two GLP-1 drugs previously approved by the FDA in injectable form.
No brain, no gain: Neuronal activity enhances benefits of exercise
Research led by Penn neuroscientist J. Nicholas Betley and collaborators finds that hypothalamic neurons are essential for translating physical exertion into endurance, potentially opening the door to exercise-mimicking therapies.
In honor of Valentine's Day, and as a way of fostering community in her Shakespeare in Love course, Becky Friedman took her students to the University Club for lunch one class period. They talked about the movie "Shakespeare in Love," as part of a broader conversation on how Shakespeare's works are adapted.
In Becky Friedman’s English course Shakespeare in Love, undergraduate students analyze language, genre, and adaptation in the Bard’s plays through the lens of love.
Beating the heat: Designing cooling for bodies in motion
Dorit Aviv, director of Weitzman’s Thermal Architecture Lab, studies how humans, technology, and design intersect, paving the way for the development of novel approaches to cooling people efficiently.
