About
Upcoming Seminars
Title: The Spread of Behavior in Social Networks
Speaker: Damon Centola, Ph.D. – MIT Sloan School of Management
Date: May 22, 2012
Time: 4:00 – 5:30pm
Place: BU School of Management, 595 Commonwealth Ave, Room 302
In public health and health product adoption, advertising campaigns frequently rely on “word of mouth” through social networks in order to promote information diffusion about a new product or behavior. Recent advances in network theory have shown how specific topological features of social networks can amplify the diffusion of both disease and information – suggesting that important advances in network epidemiology may also be useful for structuring new product campaigns. However, recent theoretical work also shows that the dynamics of behavioral diffusion in peer-to-peer networks can respond very differently to the topological properties of networks. For behaviors that are particularly costly, difficult, or unfamiliar, these differences may be more pronounced. My findings show that many of the campaigns of greatest interest to firms and public health officials may not benefit from network strategies aimed at the rapid diffusion of information. I present findings from a series of novel experiments designed to study the dynamics of behavioral diffusion in large social networks. The results show a striking effect of network topology on the diffusion of health behavior, contrary to the expectations of classical network theory.
Paper:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5996/1194.full
Professor Centola is a faculty member in the Behavioral and Policy Sciences research group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research addresses theoretical and empirical problems in the diffusion of collective behavior. His core sociological interest is how individual actions aggregate to produce (often unexpected) collective outcomes. This includes the mobilization of social movements, the self-organization of ethnic communities and cultural enclaves, the spread of health behaviors (such as vaccination, dieting, and condom use), and the coordination of collective beliefs (such as religious extremism and social sanctioning practices). Before coming to M.I.T., Professor Centola was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at Harvard University, and had been a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, the Santa Fe Institute, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies.
Mission
The Boston University Health Policy Institute (HPI) brings together scholars and health professionals from across the University and affiliated institutions to engage in research and evaluation activities to illuminate our understanding of health policy issues, and to develop and analyze strategic policy options for improving health care. HPI conducts research in four core areas of interest:
1) Strategies for improving healthcare quality, access, and affordability;
2) Cross-national comparisons of health care systems;
3) Tools for healthcare informatics and information systems; and
4) Organizational transformation in health care.
Based within the School of Management, the Institute also houses the national program office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program, and has links to the School of Medicine and School of Public Health.
History
The HPI was founded in 1975 under the direction of Richard H. Egdahl, M.D. For much of its first three decades, the Institute conducted research studies in the areas of hospital payment, health technology, and resource decision making, and functioned as a laboratory for developing and testing innovative solutions to health system problems. During the 1990s, the Institute hosted the Health Care Entrepreneurship Program (HCEP), also under the direction of Dr. Egdahl, and served as an incubator for new start-ups and product development in medicine and health.
In 2003, Alan B. Cohen, Sc.D., joined the Institute as executive director and the primary research focus shifted to the evaluation of strategies for improving healthcare quality, access, and affordability. Other areas of interest included: cross-national comparisons of health care systems; strategies for increasing human capital in health policy and quality improvement; and the evaluation of policies governing the adoption and regulation of medical technology.
In 2010, the HPI became a unit of the School of Management and its mission and core objectives were redefined and refocused to include the four areas listed above. This strategic expansion of core activities was motivated by the growing importance of these areas to health policy in the U.S. and other countries, and by the rich resources relevant to each area that exist across Boston University. With support from the Office of the Provost, the HPI seeks to connect faculty members from across the University to conduct collaborative, interdisciplinary research. Senior Fellows are drawn from the School of Management, the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, and the School of Law, as well as from Boston Medical Center.
Contact
Boston University Health Policy Institute
53 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
Phone: (617) 353-4520
Fax: (617) 353-6393
Email: buhpi@bu.edu