11 Mar 2017

Ichiro Kawachi: nudging people towards better health

From Saturday Morning, 8:18 am on 11 March 2017
Professor Ichiro Kawachi

Photo: Supplied

30 years ago, Dr Ichiro Kawachi had an article published in The New Zealand Medical Journal which helped change the law on smoking in this country - and set him on a public health career path.

Dr Kawachi is particularly interested in behavioural economics, which combines economics and psychology to investigate how people actually behave - as opposed to how they would behave if they were perfectly rational.

He talks with Kim Hill.

Ichiro Kawachi is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health. Kawachi received both his medical degree and Ph.D. (in epidemiology) from the University of Otago, New Zealand.