Kevin G. Volpp is an American behavioral economist and Mark V. Pauly President's Distinguished Professor at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

’s

Perelman School of Medicine The Perelman School of Medicine, commonly known as Penn Med, is the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1765, the Perelman School of Medicine is the oldest medi ...

and the

Wharton School The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in P ...

. He is the Director of the Penn Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics (CHIBE)..

Education

Volpp earned his bachelor’s degree ''magna cum laude'' in biology from Harvard and was a Rotary Scholar at Freie Universitat in Berlin, Germany. He earned an MD from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and a PhD from the Wharton School from the graduate group in Applied Economics and Managerial Science.

Appointments

Volpp is the Division Chief of the Health Policy Division of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the

. For 20 years, he also served as an attending physician at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and worked as a part-time primary care clinician and hospitalist.

Research

Volpp’s research applies principles of behavioral economics to improve health and health care. One study led by Volpp was a large randomized trial of financial incentives and smoking cessation among employees at

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

. Long-term quit rates from a $750 incentive were approximately three times higher in the intervention group. The main trial paper led GE to implement a benefit design change based on this study to its 150,000 US employees. Follow-up work extended this among employees at CVS and also demonstrated a tripling in long-term smoking cessation rates and led to a national program among CVS employees called “700 Good Reasons.” This was followed by a large-scale study of financial incentives and smoking cessation that found that offering standard pharmacologic therapies and e-cigarettes were no more effective than control whereas either gain- or loss-framed incentives tripled smoking cessation rates among employees of 54 different employers His team has also conducted studies examining the impact of behavioral economic strategies on increasing physical activity, medication adherence, and on physician behavior. Volpp’s research group also conducted a number of national evaluations of the 2003 and 2011 national duty hour regulations, the first to regulate work hours for physicians in the United States in a series of papers published in ''

JAMA ''The Journal of the American Medical Association'' (''JAMA'') is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 48 times a year by the American Medical Association. It publishes original research, reviews, and editorials covering all aspects of biom ...

.''

Awards and honors

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Volpp, Kevin Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Harvard College alumni Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania alumni Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania faculty 21st-century American economists Behavioral economists 20th-century American economists 20th-century American physicians 21st-century American physicians Members of the National Academy of Medicine