Meet Dr. Sean Young, Founder and Director of the UC Institute for Prediction Technology and International Best-selling Author of “Stick With It”

By Sierra Stark, UCI School of Medicine

Dr. Sean Young is an Orange County native who has devoted his career to leveraging technology and his background in human psychology research in order to develop successful public health interventions. He is the founder and executive director of the UC Institute for Prediction Technology and the UCLA Center for Digital Behavior, and he currently holds faculty positions at UCI in both the department of emergency medicine as well as the department of information and computer sciences.

Dr. Young first became fascinated with human behavior after taking a couple of psychology courses while doing his undergraduate degree in ethnomusicology at UCLA. He then went on to Stanford to complete his Master’s in health services research as well as his PhD in psychology in 2008. Later on, while doing his postdoctoral fellowship in infectious disease and global health at UCLA, some personal experiences led him to ask the question: “Why don’t people stick to behavior changes they know are good for them?”

This central question motivated Dr. Young to found the UC Institute for Prediction Technology in 2015. The institute is committed to leveraging social media and technology to predict human behaviors and outcomes. Research efforts at the institute include tracking risk behaviors to predict disease so as to inform intervention efforts, as well as determining predictors of social values, academic success, or community involvement. The Institute organized Opioid Hackathons in 2018 and 2019 to help address the ongoing opioid epidemic in the US, and they have partnered with a number of government agencies such as the CDC and California Highway Patrol to implement public health interventions.

To share his expertise in the field with a broader audience, Dr. Young published the #1 Wall Street Journal and international best-selling book, “Stick With It,” in 2017. The book is aimed at de-bunking the myth that we should place blame on the person if they can’t stick to a behavior change; instead, implementing lasting changes requires examining the circumstances that are impeding that person’s success. The book lays out three different types of behaviors (automatic, burning, and common behaviors) and then provides 7 different psychology tools that can be used to change a given behavior.

Now as a faculty member in UCI’s department of emergency medicine, Dr. Young brings his knowledge and expertise in human behavior psychology to research and address some of the key public health issues that are faced in the ED. He is involved with projects on understanding public attitudes about COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation; substance use and the role of stigma in opioid treatment uptake; medication adherence and sexual health. Many of these projects use digital platforms to implement behavior changes that are peer-led, which allows for more community-based change. 

Dr. Young is continuously working to use new technology and big data to develop effective and lasting interventions. We are excited to see how he will shape the way we use social media to have a positive impact on health outcomes.