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We must invest in behavioural economics for the HIV response

Nature Human Behaviour volume 7, pages 1241–1244 (2023)Cite this article

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Effective HIV prevention and treatment are widely available, but services are underused and underdelivered. Behavioural economics offers insights into why this is and shows us cost-effective interventions to change behaviours. We call for investment in scaling up behavioural economics approaches to aid in progress towards ending HIV.

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Acknowledgements

This paper summarizes presentations and discussion from a session on ‘Behavioral Economics and Conditional Incentives to Strengthen HIV Treatment and Prevention’. The satellite session at the AIDS 2022 Conference was organized by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Fogarty International Center (FIC) of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). It examined the use of behavioural economics and conditional incentives in HIV treatment and prevention programmes, and identified strategies to support their further advancement and use. The entire session is available online. The authors acknowledge input from D. Rausch, R. Sturke, B. Barnett and M. J. Stirratt in the conceptualization of the satellite session and/or in reviewing an earlier draft of the manuscript. There was no direct federal or private funding for this paper. The opinions are those of the authors alone, and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIMH, FIC, the NIH or any other institution.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Services Policy and Practice, School of Public Health, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Omar Galárraga

  2. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, USA

    Sebastian Linnemayr

  3. Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Sandra I. McCoy

  4. Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Harsha Thirumurthy

  5. Division of AIDS Research, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Christopher Gordon

  6. Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Susan Vorkoper

Authors
  1. Omar Galárraga
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  2. Sebastian Linnemayr
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  3. Sandra I. McCoy
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  4. Harsha Thirumurthy
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  5. Christopher Gordon
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  6. Susan Vorkoper
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Omar Galárraga.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Justin Strickland, Hamid Sharifi and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Galárraga, O., Linnemayr, S., McCoy, S.I. et al. We must invest in behavioural economics for the HIV response. Nat Hum Behav 7, 1241–1244 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01664-z

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