Prof. Susan Michie - WORLD PANDEMIC CONFERENCE

Professor of Health Psychology, University College London

Susan Michie, FMedSci, FAcSS is Professor of Health Psychologyand Director of the Centre for Behaviour Changeat University College London (www.ucl.ac.uk/behaviour-change). She is co-Director of NIHR’s Behavioural Science Policy Research Unit, leads UCL’s membership of NIHR’s School of Public Health Research and is an NIHR Senior Investigator.

Professor Michie’s research focuses on behaviour change in relation to health and the environment: how to understand it theoretically and apply theory to intervention development, evaluation and implementation. Her research, collaborating withdisciplines such as information science, environmental science, computer science and medicine,covers population, organisational and individual level interventions. Examples include theHuman Behaviour-Change Project (www.humanbehaviourchange.org) and Complex Systems for Sustainability and Health www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/environmental-design/research/research-projects/cussh. She is an investigator on >15 research projects, including three addressing behaviour and the Covid-19 pandemic. She has published >500 journal articles and several books, including the Behaviour Change Wheel: A Guide to Designing Interventions.

She has served as an expert advisor on the UK’sScientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavioural Science (Covid-19), participates in the Lancet’s Covid-19 Commission and is a member of WHO’s Behavioural Insights and Sciences Technical Advisory Group. She is also expert advisor to Public Health England and the UK Department of Health and Social Care,is Chair of the UK Food Standard Agency’s Social Sciences Advisory Committee and chaired the Academy of Social Science’s ‘Health of People’ project.

Website: https://tinyurl.com/susan-michie

Email s.michie@ucl.ac.uk

Twitter: @SusanMichie

Presentation Summary

I have various roles related to the pandemic, COVID-19 Scientific Advisor to the UK Government, the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and to the WHO Behavioural Insights team. Within the framework of the psychological effects of the pandemic, my presentation will be about

• role of behaviour in pandemic transmission and in preventing transmission,

• a model of behaviour (‘COM-B’) to enable understanding and change,

• inequalities and the future.

Human behaviour is the heart of causing and transmitting pandemic infections, and it is at the heart of preventing and getting out of them as well. The presentation will show how theoretical understanding of behaviour can increase our understanding of the pandemic and the effect of the pandemic and Government policies on inequalities. In the final “future” section, I will talk about what could be done to build back better.