The NBER Roybal Center for Behavior Change in Health is one of thirteen centers authorized by Congress in 1993 and named for former House Select Committee on Aging Chair Edward R. Roybal. The Roybal Center program supports the translation and integration of behavioral and social research findings into interventions to improve the lives of older people and the capacity of institutions to adapt to societal aging.

Since its founding, the NBER Roybal Center has worked to translate basic research findings in the economics of aging into practical applications that improve health and well-being. In its first decade, the Center studied field, laboratory, and natural experiments to better understand a range of health and financial well-being topics. Now in its seventeenth year, the Center supports clinical trials that explore the relationship between health outcomes, human behavior, and health dynamics. The fundamental aim of the Center is to identify and test opportunities for behavior change, focusing on scalable interventions with potential to broadly improve population health as people age.