2024 Nudges in Health Care Symposium

Leora Horwitz, MD, MHS

Dr. Horwitz is director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science at NYU Langone Health and leads its Rapid Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) Laboratory. She also serves as director of the Division of Healthcare Delivery Science in the Department of Population Health at NYU School of Medicine, a tenured professor of population health and of medicine, and a practicing internist. Her work focuses on improving the safety and quality of health care delivery. Under her leadership the Rapid RCT Laboratory uses rapid-cycle randomized trials to test simple, pragmatic ideas that can quickly improve health care practice and be scaled nationally. It is one of the first centers in the country to apply rapid RCT methodologies within a health system and has conducted over 20 trials to date. Dr. Horwitz also is principal investigator on several major research and training grants from the NIH and AHRQ. She has been recognized with several prestigious awards. Dr. Horwitz received her undergraduate degree in social studies from Harvard and her medical degree from Harvard Medical School. She then completed residency and chief residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, NY, and the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale.

Amy Bucher, PhD

Dr. Amy Bucher is chief behavioral officer and co-director of the Behavioral Reinforcement Learning Lab (BReLL) at Lirio, Inc. Dr. Bucher’s team at Lirio focuses on designing precision nudging interventions using reinforcement learning to personalize the delivery of nudges that encourage health care behaviors such as cancer screenings, vaccinations, medication adherence, and chronic condition management. Prior to joining Lirio, Dr. Bucher was vice president of behavior change design at Mad*Pow, a strategic design consultancy, and has also worked at CVS Health in their Digital Innovation Lab and as a member of the Behavioral Science team at Johnson & Johnson. Dr. Bucher is an active member of the Society for Behavioral Medicine and serves on their Industry Connections Committee facilitating collaborations with academic teams. Dr. Bucher is the author of Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change, published by Rosenfeld Media and named a Kirkus favorite indie book of 2020. Dr. Bucher earned her PhD and MA in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and her AB magna cum laude in psychology from Harvard University.