David Cameron's "nudge unit" is at the heart of the coalition's thinking on public health reform.
The Behavioural Insight Team, as it is formally called, got into full swing at the end of last month when behavioural economics expert Dr David Halpern returned to No 10 and the Cabinet Office to lead the unit's work on "big society" and wellbeing.
Its first area of focus will be the problems of obesity, diet and alcohol, working alongside the health secretary's Responsibility Deal Behaviour Change group.
The idea is that individuals can be persuaded – "nudged" – into making better choices for themselves without force or regulation. The coalition agreement talks about "finding intelligent ways to encourage people to make better choices for themselves".
Halpern has worked at the Cabinet Office before, having spent several years in Tony Blair's strategy unit, authoring the influential paper Personal Responsibility and Behaviour Change.
The theories behind the current work have a long history, but came to prominence in 2008 with a book called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, by the Chicago Business School economist Richard Thaler and Chicago Law School professor Cass Sunstein.
The book explored "libertarian paternalism", or how public and private organisations can help people make better choices through market incentives. Steve Hilton, Cameron's director of strategy, is said to have introduced him to nudging, and Cameron reportedly put the book on his shadow frontbench team's list of required reading. Thaler has been advising the nudge unit in recent weeks, while Sunstein is working with President Obama in the White House.
Halpern says in his blog that his work will build on the Mindspace report commissioned by the previous government. Mindspace looked at ways of changing people's behaviour by influencing not just what they consciously think but also by influencing their "automatic processes" – cues from the subconscious, from the behaviour of people around them, and from emotional associations that affect their decisions.
This is territory that advertisers and marketers have successfully occupied for many decades. Through the nudge unit, the government wants to apply the theories systematically to all policy, with the Public Health Responsibility Deals taking the lead.
A spokesman for the Department of Health explained: "Our aim is to give people the help and advice they need to adopt a healthy lifestyle, and the latest academic evidence suggests new ways of supporting individuals in doing this. We have therefore set up a Behaviour Change Network which brings together experts in behavioural science with those from businesses and non-governmental organisations to look at these new ideas."