How industry and agency needs to collaborate with the best of academia in order to create behavioural change programmes that are rooted in robust, validated techniques as well as creative inspiration.

1. Changing behaviors for
the better,
Ours and theirs!
Ross Taylor
@rossintheshed

2. Introduction
Dr Paul Chadwick BSc, MA, DClinPsyRoss Taylor
Senior Teaching Fellow at the
UCL Centre for Behaviour Change
SVP, Strategy, Social & Innovation
at Digitas Health
@rossintheshed
With grateful
thanks to

3. 66% of Americans
said they would
use mobile health
apps to manage
their health
http://www.makovsky.com/insights/articles/733

4. 20% of smartphone users have
one or more applications on
their device that helps them
track or manage their health.
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/health-fact-sheet/

5. >165,000 health related apps available
http://mobihealthnews.com/46863/ims-1-in-10-health-apps-connects-to-a-device-1-in-50-connects-to-healthcare-providers
Disease & Treatment Management
Healthcare Providers/Insurance
Medication Reminders & Info
Women’s Health & Pregnancy
Disease Specific
Wellness Management
Fitness
Lifestyle & Stress
Diet & Nutrition
Other
36%17%12%11%
7%
2%
6% 9%

6. And yet…
and yet…

7. • Smoking causes 6 million
deaths per year across
the world
• In the US, there are 40
million smokers
• 16 million of these have
tried to quit last year
• Less than 1% succeeded
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/

8. • 2.8 million adults
die each year
directly as a result
of being overweight
• In 2014, 1.9 billion
adults were overweight.
http://www.who.int/gho/ncd/risk_factors/obesity_text/en/
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/

9. • 347 million people
worldwide have diabetes
• Diabetes directly causes
more than 1.5 million
deaths across the world
directly, in addition to
doubling the overall
chance of death compared
to non-diabetics
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs312/en/

10. Why?

11. Understanding why people change is
complicated

12. Change theories

13. Multitude of research studies
There are a large volume of scientific research studies examining elements
of effective behavioural change in smoking cessation and other similar
areas, such as alcohol reduction

14. From the intriguing…
Photoaging apps
A recent randomized
controlled trial by Burford
et al published in
theJournal of Medical
Internet
Research demonstrated an
increased quit rate of 21%
in 18-30-year-old young
adults by the help of
photoaging desktop
programs, in which an image
is altered to predict
future appearance [1]

15. To the curious…
Using WhatsApp and Facebook Online
Social Groups for Smoking Relapse
Prevention for Recent Quitters:
A Pilot Pragmatic Cluster
Randomized Controlled Trial
Fewer participants in the WhatsApp group
(17%, 7/42) reported relapse than the control
group (42.6%, 23/54) at 2-month (OR 0.27, 95%
CI 0.10-0.71) and 6-month (40.5%, 17/42 vs
61.1%, 33/54; OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.19-0.99)
follow-ups.
http://www.jmir.org/2015/10/e238

16. The design of interventions is an important factor
for adherence and shows that there are persuasive
features (eg, dialogue support, reminders and praise)
when implemented in Web-based interventions that
predict higher adherence.
• Personalisation
• Decisional control
• Ambient information
• Metaphor
To the fundamental…
http://www.jmir.org/2015/7/e172/

17. Evaluating a multitude of variables
around content, channel, timing,
frequency, targeting…
Mostly with tiny sample sizes
Certainly not enough to make
a difference to the figures
I shared earlier.

19. ISRII scientific
meeting 2014

20. Christopher Fairburn
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Oxford
Principal research fellow, Wellcome Trust
ISRII scientific
meeting 2014
“Get out of the ivory towers, and
find industry and agency partners
to help take your ideas forward and
reach the world!”

21. Academic research does
give us an abundance
of robust suggestions
for content, approach,
services and targeting
that has been based
on a range of solid
scientific evaluations

22. In a creative agency…

23. USEFUL
USABLE DESIRABLE
In a creative agency…

24. But we are trying to learn from
tested theories
Stages of
Change
Heuristic
Biases
Power of
Mindfulness
The
Habit Loop
Prochaska
taught us
that
quitting
starts
before the
quitter is
ready
Tversky and
Kahneman
taught us
about the
flaws in
our mental
operating
system
Judson
Brewer
suggests the
best way to
beat a crave
may be to
pay more
attention to
it
DuHigg
proposed
that habit
is a
repeating
loop – Cue,
Routine,
Reward
Building
Tiny Habits
BJ Fogg
breaks big
change into
many little
changes
Behavioural
Economics
Thaler
states
positioning
and
tonality
are
important
factors
Fagerstrom
Nicotine
Dependency Test
Fagerstrom
provides us
with the
means for
more
accurate
profiling

25. Building on the wisdom
of academic leaders
Robert West
Professor of Health Psychology
Health Behaviour Research Centre
University College London
“At each
moment of our
lives, we act
in pursuit of
what we most
desire at that
moment.”

26. To create programmes that try
to build on proven techniques

27. But to succeed,
we need to learn the
lessons of both worlds

28. We need a common
language of change

29. We need to deploy
the creativity,
experience and
reach of industry
approach with the
rigour and
discipline of
the academic
approach

30. We need to collaborate
because our target audiences need
the best possible help we can create

31. Because success
means years
of life
IF we can help one more smoker
quit at 35, they will live an
average of 7.3 years longer!
With thanks for listening
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447499
@rossintheshed