The Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) at Geisinger

NOTE: The Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) is a unit housed within Geisinger's Steele Institute for Health Innovation. It is separate from the Meyer-Chabris Lab, which is housed in Geisinger Research, although there is overlap in both personnel and questions of interest.

What We Are

The Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) is a unit in Geisinger’s Steele Institute for Health Innovation that designs, implements, and rigorously evaluates provider- and patient-facing “nudges” that aim to make healthy choices easier. The BIT also investigates the acceptability of nudges to stakeholders. A "nudge" is a way of altering the organization or presentation of options (the “choice architecture”) to the decision-maker (e.g., a clinician or patient) that makes her more likely to make the “right” choice (improved health or equal health with lower cost), without imposing significant additional economic costs or incentives and while leaving her free to make a different choice. Nudges are based on key facts and conclusions from 50 years of scientific research on human decision-making. They have advantages to more heavy-handed interventions ("shoves"): they are comparatively inexpensive (or free) and therefore can potentially deliver significant returns relative to their cost, and they put a thumb on the scale for decisions that are best for most people and in most cases, while leaving people free to make different choices. 

What We Do

We partner with internal & external groups to characterize the nature, extent, and causes of the relevant problem. We develop potential solutions informed by behavioral science. We develop an implementation plan that includes rigorous evaluation (usually A/B tests). We achieve stakeholder buy-in and approvals for the proposed intervention. We analyze the resulting data and work with our partners to implement or optimize the intervention. Finally, we disseminate our findings so that others can learn from what we do. We have a long-term partnership with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the NBER Roybal Center for Behavior Change in Health, one of 13 National Institute on Aging (NIA)-funded Roybal Centers.

Examples of Our Work

  • Shermohammed, M., Goren, A., Lanyado, A., Yesharim, R., Wolk, D. M., Doyle, J., Meyer, M. N.,* Chabris, C. F.* Informing patients that they are at high risk for serious infection increases vaccination rates. MedRxiv preprint. * joint senior authors 
  • Santos et al., Sending emails designed with behavioral science to increase COVID-19 vaccination among health care workers. Preprint coming soon. 
  • Milkman, K. L., et al. A mega-study of text-based nudges encouraging patients to get vaccinated at an upcoming doctor’s appointment. SSRN preprint.
  • Milkman, K. L., et al. A mega-study of text-message nudges encouraging patients to get vaccinated at their pharmacy. SSRN preprint. 

Who We Are

Michelle N. Meyer, PhD, JD
Faculty Co-Director

Michelle Meyer is an Assistant Professor at Geisinger, where she co-directs an interdisciplinary lab that investigates judgments and decision-making related to research, innovation, and healthcare. She is also Associate Director for Research Ethics at Geisinger and chairs its IRB Leadership Committee. Her writing has appeared in leading journals of bioethics (American Journal of Bioethics, Hastings Center Report, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal), law (Harvard Law Review, Administrative Law Review), and science (Nature, Science, PNAS), as well as in popular media outlets (New York Times, Slate, Wired, Los Angeles Times, and Forbes.com). She has served on numerous boards and commissions, including National Academies study committees and working groups, an American Psychological Association blue ribbon commission, the editorial board of Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, the Board of Directors of Open Humans Foundation (formerly PersonalGenomes.org), and the Ethics and Compliance Advisory Board of PatientsLikeMe. She earned a Ph.D. in religious studies, with a focus on applied ethics, from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, she clerked for Judge Stanley Marcus of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College. She is a Team Scientist with Wharton's Behavior Change for Good Initiative.

Christopher F. Chabris, PhD
Faculty Co-Director

Christopher Chabris is a Professor at Geisinger. His research focuses on attention, intelligence (individual, collective, and social), behavior genetics, and decision-making. He received his Ph.D. in psychology and A.B. in computer science from Harvard University; he is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. Chris is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us,which has been published in 20 languages to date. He shared the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology (awarded for "achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think"), given for the scientific experiment that inspired the book. Chris has spoken to audiences at major conferences and businesses, including PopTech, Google, Credit Suisse, and Procter & Gamble, and his work has been published in leading journals including Science, Nature, PNAS, Psychological Science, Perception, and Cognitive Science. He is a chess master, poker amateur, and games enthusiast; for three years he wrote the monthly "Game On" column in The Wall Street Journal. He also contributes to The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and other publications. He is a Team Scientist with Wharton's Behavior Change for Good Initiative.

Amir Goren, PhD
Program Director

Amir Goren applies psychological and behavioral economic principles in the design and evaluation of interventions to improve patient outcomes and reduce system costs. He received his PhD in psychology from Princeton University, where he coauthored a Science article on the prediction of election outcomes from face-based inferences of competence and served as a teaching assistant for Kahneman and Shafir’s class on judgment and decision making. He received a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. Amir conducted postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health, where he applied structural equation modeling to the longitudinal study of work complexity and intellectual functioning in diverse populations, and the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, where he tested the impact of different communications (informed by social psychology) on public acceptance of policies to reduce unhealthy food marketing to children. Before joining the BIT, Amir was a Senior Director at Kantar Health, consulting on and publishing numerous health outcomes research studies for the pharmaceutical industry, with expertise in identifying and incorporating patient-reported outcome measures (e.g., quality of life, medication adherence, and treatment satisfaction scales) to best assess patient-centered needs and experiences.

Gail Rosenbaum, PhD
​Staff Scientist

Gail Rosenbaum is a Staff Scientist in the Behavioral Insights Team at Geisinger, where she applies insights from research on judgment and decision making to improve healthcare decisions and outcomes for Geisinger patients and employees. She has expertise in experimental design, quantitative analysis, data visualization, and programming in R, bash, and Matlab. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Temple University, where she studied how situational factors (e.g., the way information about risk is learned, the presence of peers) drive adolescents to take more risks than adults. She subsequently completed an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship at New York University, where she used brain imaging and computational modeling to understand the development of decision making across adolescence. Gail holds a B.A. in Psychology from Indiana University.

Geisinger Clinical Advisors

  • Bradley Flansbaum, DO (Internal Medicine)
  • Sandy M. Green, MD (Cardiology)
  • Chadd Kraus, DO, DrPH, MPH, CPE, FACEP (Emergency Medicine)
  • Thomas B. Morland, MD (Internal Medicine)
  • Kyle Marshall, MD (Clinical Informatics, Emergency Medicine)
  • Jonathan E. Swinden, MD (Internal Medicine)
  • Donna M. Wolk, MHA, PhD, D(ABMM) (Molecular and Microbial Diagnostics and Development)

Henri Santos, PhD
Staff Scientist

Henri Santos is a Staff Scientist in the Behavioral Insights Team at Geisinger, where he designs and tests programs to improve decision-making and health outcomes throughout the health system. He has experience in experimental and longitudinal study design, quantitative and qualitative analysis, R programming, and data visualization. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Waterloo, Canada, where he investigated how to measure and cultivate wisdom in everyday life. He also studied how and why cultural values and practices shift over time in multiple countries across the world. Before joining the BIT, Henri was a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Christopher Chabris and Michelle Meyer, where he examined how people perceive and seek medical expertise from different sources. He received an A.B. in Psychology from Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C.

External Scientific Advisors

BIT Alums

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Maheen Shermohammed was a Staff Scientist in the Behavioral Insights Team at Geisinger from 2019-2021, where she applied behavioral science research to test and implement interventions targeted at improving health outcomes and the functioning of the health system. She has expertise in experiment design, R programming, statistical analysis, and data visualization. Maheen completed her Ph.D. in Psychology at Harvard University, where she used brain imaging techniques to study how people process emotions in challenging circumstances. She also founded Harvard’s Women in Psychology group, a 60+ member organization that promotes diversity and inclusion in the psychological sciences. Before Geisinger, Maheen conducted research at MIT, where she managed research studies on topics including memory, autism, ADHD, and mild traumatic brain injury. Maheen holds a B.S. in Neuroscience from Duke University.