Of 14,677 patients in an HMO (gotta love HMOs for epidemiology!) who received an EpiPen® prescription, only 46% filled the prescription even once.

Advocates, you're missing the point. These mothers are educated. They have seen the reaction. They have the prescription in hand. They are choosing to ignore it, despite having the information they need.

Epinephrine is the cornerstone of emergency response, yet few individuals with serious food allergies consistently carry their emergency medication. Behavioral economics offers promising, previously untapped opportunities for behavior change in this arena.

Although the intervention and control groups reported favorable impressions of text message-based reminder systems, the intervention group performed significantly better than the control group on a photograph-based measurement of epinephrine carriage. There remained ample room for improvement in the 2 groups given the goal of consistent, uninterrupted epinephrine carriage by people with potentially life-threatening food allergies.

Dr. Victor Montori of Mayo Clinic describes two types of patients living with chronic illness who don’t follow their physicians’ advice when it comes to implementing recommended treatments or therapies.

When I mentioned this in passing to my students that day, it immediately got a reaction. “Patient burnout?!? That’s a THING?!? I thought just doctors got burnout?” 

I read this on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup. Seriously. It was written by Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert, who said:

“The fact that we can make disastrous decisions even as we foresee their consequences is the great unsolved mystery of human behaviour.