Behavioral Evidence Hub Seeks to Link Research With Solutions
A website is launching that promises to spotlight evidence-based initiatives that offer deep insight into tough problems – from staying in college and increasing savings rates to improving medication adherence and vaccination uptake – into a single tool. The Behavioral Evidence Hub, or B-Hub, also features solutions and implementation guidelines for practitioners interested in using the insights and innovations in their own work.
The goal of the new site is to bridge the gap between promising academic research and large-scale deployment of behaviorally informed solutions in products, systems and programs. Among the areas spotlighted in the early version of the hub are health, education, criminal justice, environmental conservation, and financial inclusion. The site is located at BHub.org.
Three organizations are behind the launch of the open-source site: the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, the monprofit Innovations for Poverty Action, and the nonprofit behavioral science consultant, ideas42. The site is made possible in part by support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and others.
The effort seeks content from the researchers and organizations producing innovations and solutions, and B-Hub organizers say they are actively seeking new contributions. Ongoing content development is supported by a network of contributors including the Behavioral Insights Group at the Harvard Kennedy School, the OECD, and the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority.
B-Hub’s format enables users to discover insights by problem domain, geography or solution format. Users can browse through the curated database of content, focus on specific insights that might be applicable to their own work, or run their existing programs through a checklist to determine how behaviorally optimized it is.
