Personal financial incentives can change habitual health-related behaviors and help reduce health inequalities .
However , their role in reducing disease burden is potentially limited given current evidence that effects dissipate beyond three months post-incentive removal
OBJECTIVES Uncertainty remains about whether personal financial incentives could achieve sustained changes in health-related behaviors that would reduce the fast-growing global non-communicable disease burden .
This review aims to estimate whether : i. financial incentives achieve sustained changes in smoking , eating , alcohol consumption and physical activity ; ii .
effectiveness is modified by ( a ) the target behavior , ( b ) incentive value and attainment certainty , ( c ) recipients ' deprivation level .
Behavioral anti-smoking trial in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients
Smoking causes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ( COPD ) , but few controlled studies have tested anti-smoking treatments in COPD . With procedures likely to attract unmotivated persons we recruited 49 quite-ill , smoking COPD patients . During one or two daily home visits for 85 days , breath carbon monoxide ( CO ) and self-reports of daily smoking were obtained . Patients , given quit date s and nicotine gum ( 2-mg pieces , up to 30 per day ) , were assigned r and omly to three groups : Experimentals were reinforced with lottery tickets for CO < 10 ppm . Cigarette Self Report ( CSR ) patients were reinforced for reporting no smoking that day . Controls received non-contingent payments . Each group 's mean CO level fell at the quit date . Thereafter , reinforced patients maintained significantly lower CO levels than Controls . Although many more 24-h abstentions occurred in the intervention period than in baseline , few patients sustained abstinence ; the groups did not differ in that regard . Outcome was predicted by decisions to throw away cigarettes when intervention began , but not by motivation scales nor Fagerstrom dependence scores . Pay schedules apparently exaggerated self-reports of reduced smoking . Although results are statistically significant , there is still no proven , practical treatment for smoking in advanced COPD
Personal financial incentives can change habitual health-related behaviors and help reduce health inequalities .
However , their role in reducing disease burden is potentially limited given current evidence that effects dissipate beyond three months post-incentive removal
OBJECTIVES Uncertainty remains about whether personal financial incentives could achieve sustained changes in health-related behaviors that would reduce the fast-growing global non-communicable disease burden .
This review aims to estimate whether : i. financial incentives achieve sustained changes in smoking , eating , alcohol consumption and physical activity ; ii .
effectiveness is modified by ( a ) the target behavior , ( b ) incentive value and attainment certainty , ( c ) recipients ' deprivation level .