南开大学养老与健康青年学者论坛的主题涵盖医疗行为、医院管理、医保运行、个体健康、养老金市场、银发经济和养老地产等和养老与健康相关的话题，旨在搭建相关领域的青年学者交流平台，推动相关领域的研究与合作，欢迎南开大学校内外师生积极参加！

南开大学养老与健康青年学者论坛第11期活动安排如下：

讲座题目：No Pain, No Gain: Salience, Attention, and Decisions in Healthcare 

主讲嘉宾：汪雅洁

北京大学国家发展研究院博雅博士后，北京大学经济学院博士。研究方向：健康经济学、劳动经济学和应用微观经济学。曾在《China Economic Review》等国内外学术期刊上发表多篇学术论文。

讲座时间：2025年10月22日（周三）14:30-16:00 

讲座地点：金融学院116教室

内容摘要

How attention influences medical decision-making? We leverage a novel setting of herpes zoster (HZ), an acute, temporary skin condition that causes severe somatic pain. During the course of pain, patients significantly increased the use of primary care for pre-existing chronic conditions, resulting in a notable reduction in hospitalizations and net savings in medical expenditure. This pattern of hospitalization offset is more pronounced among patients with more severe pain, poorer pre-HZ health, and lower pre-HZ health preference to their health. We rationalize these results in a model of pain, salience and behavioral responses in the spirit of Bordalo, Gennaioli, and Shleifer (2013). The key intuition is that the pain makes the pain-free health status more salient to decision-makers than the monetary and hassle cost of regular primary care. In addition to primary care, we also find patients in pain had utilized more preventive care, better medication adherence, and had earlier diagnosis of latent conditions. This study provides novel field evidence for the salience theory in healthcare and highlights attention as a key lever for medical decision quality and cost savings.