The Behavioral Economics and Global Health Insights (BEGIN) Lab

Alison Buttenheim, PhD, MBA
Co-Director, BEGIN Lab

Alison M. Buttenheim, PhD, MBA, is CHIBE’s Scientific Director. She is also Professor in the Department of Family and Community Health at Penn Nursing and Professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine. She also serves as Penn LDI’s Director of Engagement.

Dr. Buttenheim is a public health researcher and behavioral epidemiologist who combines her interest in behavioral economics with a focus on improving child health on a global level. She has designed and evaluated interventions to improve parental and family decision-making across a broad range of topics, including food access in low-income neighborhoods, childhood obesity, vaccine hesitancy, and participation in large-scale vector control programs. An evaluation expert, Dr. Buttenheim has published or consulted on several international evaluations, including school feeding schemes in Laos, household sanitation in Bangladesh, national family planning strategies in Niger and Jordan, and global tobacco surveillance strategies.

She earned an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a PhD in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she majored in Community Health Sciences and minored in Sociology/Demography. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at Penn.