The folks at the Behavioural Insights Team have a nice blog post describing follow-up work to their famous project using social norms (and other tools) to decrease unnecessary prescribing of antibiotics. Three key elements jump out to me.
After finding strong initial evidence supporting the behaviourally-informed letters:
- The team conducted subsequent studies in different countries to investigate the generalizability of the effect. Does it work in different contexts? So far, yes!
- The team conducted subsequent studies to tease apart the elements of the behaviourally-informed letters that are most important in driving behaviour change. What’s the key driver in this case? Social norms!
- The team conducted subsequent studies to investigate different baseline rates of prescribing among different patient populations and found that some populations are routinely underprescribed antibiotics. Can the behaviourally-informed letters help improve equity so more people are getting the right prescriptions? Maybe! We’re waiting on the full paper to get the full results.
Read more at https://www.bi.team/blogs/amr-blog/