How Chance, Timing and Cognitive Bias Shape Our Health

You wouldn’t think that the month in which you’re born has much to do with your medical outcomes. In fact, kids who have summer birthdays are more likely to get the flu than kids born later in the year, and kids diagnosed with ADHD and born in August are prescribed an average of 120 more days of medication than kids born in September. These anomalies are just some of the many hidden forces that “can send two otherwise-similar people down very different paths of care, by chance alone,” according to Harvard Medical School doctors Anupam Jena and Christopher Worsham. We learn why chance events influence how we experience the healthcare system and how we can begin to correct for them. Jena and Worsham’s new book is “Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health.”

Guests:

Anupam B. Jena, professor, Harvard Medical School; co-author, "Random Acts of Medicine"; host, Freakonomics, M.D. podcast

Christopher Worsham, pulmonary and critical care physician, Massachusetts General Hospital; researcher, Harvard Medical School; co-author, "Random Acts of Medicine"

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