Psychological research suggests that interventions that encourage routines, or stable habits, could improve individual welfare tremendously, in particular, if capable of improving behaviors and decisions about health, education, and personal finance. Established habits help reduce cognitive load such that goal-pursuit behaviors are automatic, and individuals may not need to decide every time how much to work out, what to eat, how to spend money, and how hard to study (Neal, Wood, and Drolet 2013).

Increased physical activity by walking further or more vigorously may delay the development of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) and associated cognitive decline but reaching higher levels of activity and maintaining it as a long-term habit is difficult to do. This project will use concepts from behavioral science to create a mobility game that people at risk for developing ADRD can play in order to increase their levels of activity while having fun doing it.

Poverty confers many costs on individuals. Being poor harms health, reduces educational attainment, and lowers productivity. More insidiously, the stress and deprivation of poverty levies a tax on cognitive bandwidth, which has the potential to further reduce overall well-being via by decreasing utility from whatever little the poor are able to consume. Despite this theoretical premise, no research to our knowledge has examined the effects of poverty-related cognitive taxes on utility from consumption.

Despite a large decline in new adult HIV infections in eastern and southern Africa from 2005-2015, progress has slowed dramatically in recent years and multiple disparities have persisted within countries and between men and women. Most alarmingly, HIV risk among adolescent girls and young women in the region remains extremely high. Transactional sex, or the exchange of material support or goods in non-commercial sexual relationships that are often age-disparate, is widely believed to be among the main driving factors for the HIV risk in this population.

Public transit access to healthcare facilities is a growing problem for the elderly population in both urban and rural settings and contributes to delayed health seeking behaviors, missed appointments and poorer outcomes. The entire travel chain presents challenges including the transportation modes and the transfer points that together make up the route linking home to healthcare facilities. While the barriers faced by elders are well known to healthcare providers, they are rarely incorporated into studies of actual travel behavior and needed infrastructure improvements.

Physical pain is a common but largely overlooked and poorly understood aspect of the lives of the poor. With frequent involvement in hard physical labor, uncomfortable living conditions, and limited access to adequate medical care, the poor are particularly likely to experience pain (Poleshuk and Green 2008; Johnson et al. 2013, Tsang et al. 2008). This heavy burden of physical pain is likely to be exacerbated in the coming years as pain increases with age and populations are aging rapidly around the globe (Loeser and Melzack 1999; McBeth and Jones 2007).