David Asch
Why it's so hard to make healthy decisions
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About David Asch
Behavioral economist David Asch advances individual and population health by improving how physicians and patients make decisions in health care and in everyday life, including the use of medical treatments and personal health behaviors. David is Executive Director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation, which aims to accelerate the transformation of health care for better patient outcomes, and he is a professor at both the Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. David also practices internal medicine at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he created, and from 2001 to 2012 directed, the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion, a national center that works to support vulnerable populations and reduce health disparities. David is the author of more than 350 published papers and has won numerous awards for training and research.
Find out moreAbout This Talk
In his 2018 TEDMED Talk David Asch asserts, “Changing someone’s mind with information is hard enough, changing their behavior with information is harder still. The only way we are going to make substantial improvements in health and health care is to make substantial improvements in the behavior of health and health care.” However, as David conveys, in order to create positive health behavior change the irrationality of humans must be recognized and taken into account.
Watch David’s 2018 TEDMED Talk, “Why it's so hard to make healthy decisions” to learn how we might harness our innate human irrationality to create positive behavior change.