Justin White, PhD

Justin White, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Health Economics in the UCSF School of Medicine, with joint appointments in the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. He is also an affiliate of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Institute for Global Health Sciences at UCSF.

Dr. White studies how monetary and non-monetary incentives can be used to promote healthy behavior, informed by research from the field of behavioral economics. His main research focus is chronic disease prevention, notably tobacco cessation. He is currently testing several incentive-based interventions using randomized designs. This work is being undertaken in several countries, including Thailand, Indonesia, and the US. In other recent and ongoing projects, he is evaluating the health impacts of economic and social policies, including: sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, cash and food assistance programs, and poverty alleviation programs.