I am Michael Murphy and I currently work at Geisinger, a healthcare system. I am based in Pittston, PA, which is located between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. My job title is Wellness Associate, and my primary focus is on employee health, both internally at Geisinger, but also with other external groups that have our insurance plan.
Geisinger is both a hospital system and an insurance plan, which allows for an integrated approach to supporting preventive health measures among employees. Encouraging employee health makes sense from both a financial and personal perspective because it saves money and people are healthier and happier. There are many benefits to promoting preventive health, especially within an insurance plan. For example, it's been shown to reduce absenteeism at work. As a Wellness Associate, most of what I work on is preventive health among employees.
Could you tell me more about how you applied for this position?
I graduated from the MBDS program in August 2021 and started with Geisinger in October of the same year. Prior to graduation, I was applying for jobs at Geisinger across separate roles and teams, and this one just worked out. I am happy I landed here because it's so related to behavioral science. Most of what I help support are everyday health decisions, such as exercise, sleep, diet. Health and wellness have always been my focus, including in the graduate school program. This role just seemed like a great fit, and it was close to home. I'm also happy I ended up here because it's an organization with a lot of resources, and that's important for someone like me who is in an early career. It’s a great bonus that Geisinger has a behavioral insights team, or a "nudge unit."
This role just checked a lot of boxes and I feel fortunate to be at an organization that prioritizes wellness, and to a greater extent overtime, also prioritizes behavioral science. But one thing I always like to share is that networking helped me get this job. I met someone at my gym who also worked at Geisinger, and they referred me for the job. It really speeds things up. I am always a proponent of networking!
How did you get into behavioral science?
I started off wanting to explore a career in medicine, like clinical medicine, as maybe a physician. It’s a common career aspiration for people interested in science who are just starting college. But as I thought more about it, it seemed a little bit too long of a career path and probably not something I would be really passionate about. So, I was at a point where I was looking to change my career trajectory in undergrad. And as a Christmas gift, my cousin gave me the book "Nudge" by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. That was about halfway through my undergraduate experience. After reading this book, I became excited by working on things that helped people change for the better as it relates to health. In terms of wellness, we know so much about what it means to be healthy, such as how to sleep well, how to eat well and exercise well. But the gap isn't so much in the knowledge, but in actually getting people to do it, even for people who want to do these things.
That's where my excitement landed after reading this book. I started looking up graduate school programs that offered more training in this area, and the only one that popped up for me at the time was Penn, which was the MBDS program, practically the only one I'd probably realistically go to. I wasn't interested in going out of the country for other programs. And I live about two hours away from Philly. So, it all started with that book as a Christmas gift, and it went from there. At this point in undergrad, I pivoted towards more psychology classes and economics. It was something that snowballed after reading that book.
How do you approach incorporating behavioral insights into your work?
Most of my work involves encouraging healthy habits among people I see at health screenings. I just want to be clear that I don't have a specific behavioral science job, but this is an area rich in behavioral insights. For example, when I take someone's blood pressure or measure their cholesterol and glucose levels, there is not much I can do in terms of behavioral science at that moment, especially because I can only spend so much time with one person given our time constraints. However, when reviewing those results and building relationships through health coaching, I try to incorporate behavioral insights into my approach. There's a lot of different ways that I've tried to do it. One thing I'm thankful for is my boss is familiar with behavioral science, and she is familiar with the lingo, and she is a proponent of it. I do have support from her as a manager, and it goes a long way when people know what you're talking about
In terms of actually applying it, I always try to keep simplicity in the back of my mind when helping people set realistic and specific goals for their health. I encourage them to come up with their own goals that they want to achieve. I use the SMART framework, which is not specific to behavioral science, but still helpful in getting people to take the first step that they want to take towards their health. Another framework that I really like is the EAST framework from the Behavioural Insights team, making it easy, attractive, social and timely. Even though I'm not doing specific behavioral science projects like AB testing or formal studies, it's something that I try to incorporate all the time.
In addition, I am part of the process improvement committee within my department. I have had a chance to look at different processes and workflows and try to apply these principles from behavioral science, where people read on the page, such as where do their eyes go to, how can we design workflows that are simpler and easier to navigate. To sum it up, my focus is on simplicity to encourage behavior change, specifically the EAST framework and framing things in a way that helps encourage taking that first step.
What is the biggest challenge that you have faced in terms of communicating and collaborating with cross-functional teams to integrate behavioral science?
There's support from the team. My manager is supportive of behavioral science. But at the same time, there's not necessarily the resources all the time to do more formal things like testing or studies. For example, one of my goals last year was to work on communications towards patients and members of the health plan to help apply behavioral insights to them. For example, there was an email that was sent out to members and patients, and it was about promoting a preventive health screening. There's so much research done on how to set up an email to promote conversion, or getting people to actually follow through. There is even more research specifically on preventive healthcare measures. My manager was happy to support me in that goal, so she gave me two emails that I was able to edit to help apply behavioral science. She put me directly in a position where I could work on that and applied behavioral science.
But the challenge was not being able to test the outcomes more formally. If I did want to do an AB test, it would require quite a bit of collaboration with other teams within Geisinger. The challenge is just finding the resources. I'm lucky to at least be in a position to be able to apply it in whatever capacity I can, but I think the challenge is seeing if it actually works better than not doing it. That's probably the biggest challenge, not really having a team to work with or not having access to the resources. And also, time. It's hard to make time to do these things in addition to my other job duties.
How do you stay updated with research and new insights in behavioral science?
The biggest way is on Twitter and LinkedIn. There are so many great people on there who are supplying up-to-date research. In addition to that, podcasts, so lots of media consumption in this area.
Do you have your favorite one?
I really like Choiceology with Katy Milkman and recently I just followed the Behavioral Insights Team podcast, Inside the Nudge Unit. Those are probably my top two.
What topics or areas of interest in BeSci that you have?
Nutrition is my biggest interest. It's hard because there is a lot of sensationalized information out there, like how to eat well. Should I be vegan? Should I be a carnivore? There's just so much debate about what it means to eat well. I think we all know how to eat a little bit better. I'm not saying there's a perfect diet or anything, but we can all be reasonable with what we eat. How to promote a healthful diet is an area that I'm really interested in, and it's hard because there's a lot more to it than just behavioral science. There are socioeconomic factors to consider, as well as people with certain health conditions that might dictate how they need to eat. It's a very complex issue, but it's something that I constantly want to talk more about with people and continue to learn about. So that's probably my biggest interest right now, which is very much related to behavioral science.
What is your aspiration?
It's a timely question because at work we're thinking about our goals for the year. My North Star is that I would like to apply behavioral science to the health plan in a more leadership-level role. That would be amazing. There are health insurance plans that do this already, and there's a lot of people and teams to learn from. So, I would really like to help build that.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who started their career, based on either your personal or professional experience?
Focus on meeting people. That played a big part in how I got into graduate school and how I got my current job. It can be hard because it's difficult sometimes to put time on calendars of people who are senior to you, who might have a lot more experience and demanding jobs, and other priorities. But it's well worth it to do it in a respectful way. Focusing on networking events, going to events in your area, and just meeting people, I think goes a long way.
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This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Michael and I had this chat on 03/29/2023.
You can connect with him on his LinkedIn
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