The quality of evidence on the effect of financial incentives on breastfeeding practice s was low but seems to indicate a potential positive impact on receiving colostrum , early initiation of breastfeeding , exclusive breastfeeding and mean duration of exclusive breastfeeding .
There is no effect of financial incentives on immunization coverage although there was moderate quality evidence of conditional cash transfers leading to a small but non-significant increase in coverage of age-appropriate immunization .
Conclusions Financial incentives may have potential to promote increased coverage of several important child health interventions , but the quality of evidence available is low .
The more pronounced effects seem to be achieved by programs that directly removed user fees for access to health services .
Some indication of effect were also observed for programs that conditioned financial incentives on participation in health education and attendance to health care visits .
This finding suggest that the measured effect may be less a consequence of the financial incentive and more due to conditionalities addressing important informational barriers
Background Financial incentives are widely used strategies to alleviate poverty , foster development , and improve health .
Cash transfer programs , microcredit , user fee removal policies and voucher schemes that provide direct or indirect monetary incentives to households have been used for decades in Latin America , Sub-Saharan Africa , and more recently in Southeast Asia .
Until now , no systematic review of the impact of financial incentives on coverage and uptake of health interventions targeting children under 5 years of age has been conducted .
The objective of this review is to provide estimates on the effect of six types of financial incentive programs : ( i ) Unconditional cash transfers ( CT ) , ( ii ) Conditional cash transfers ( CCT ) , ( iii ) Microcredit ( MC ) , ( iv ) Conditional Microcredit ( CMC ) , ( v ) Voucher schemes ( VS ) and ( vi ) User fee removal ( UFR ) on the uptake and coverage of health interventions targeting children under the age of five years .
Monetary incentives in primary health care and effects on use and coverage of preventive health care interventions in rural Honduras: cluster randomised trial
BACKGROUND Scaling-up of effective preventive interventions in child and maternal health is constrained in many developing countries by lack of dem and . In Latin America , some governments have been trying to increase dem and for health interventions by making direct payments to poor households contingent on them keeping up-to- date with preventive health services . We undertook a public health programme effectiveness trial in Honduras to assess this approach , contrasting it with a direct transfer of re sources to local health teams . METHODS 70 municipalities were selected because they had the country 's highest prevalence of malnutrition . They were allocated at r and om to four groups : money to households ; re sources to local health teams combined with a community-based nutrition intervention ; both packages ; and neither . Evaluation surveys of about 5600 households were undertaken at baseline and roughly 2 years later . Pregnant women and mothers of children younger than 3 years old were asked about use of health services ( primary outcome ) and coverage of interventions such as immunisation and growth monitoring  ( secondary outcome ) . Reports were supplemented with data from children 's health cards and government service utilisation data . Analysis was by mixed effects regression , accounting for the municipality-level r and omisation . FINDINGS The household-level intervention had a large impact ( 15 - 20 percentage points ; p<0.01 ) on the reported coverage of antenatal care and well-child check-ups . Childhood immunisation series could thus be started more opportunely , and the coverage of growth monitoring was markedly increased ( 15 - 21 percentage points ; p<0.01 . Measles and tetanus toxoid immunisation were not affected . The transfer of re sources to local health teams could not be implemented properly because of legal complications . INTERPRETATION Conditional payments to households increase the use and coverage of preventive health care interventions
The quality of evidence on the effect of financial incentives on breastfeeding practice s was low but seems to indicate a potential positive impact on receiving colostrum , early initiation of breastfeeding , exclusive breastfeeding and mean duration of exclusive breastfeeding .
There is no effect of financial incentives on immunization coverage although there was moderate quality evidence of conditional cash transfers leading to a small but non-significant increase in coverage of age-appropriate immunization .
Conclusions Financial incentives may have potential to promote increased coverage of several important child health interventions , but the quality of evidence available is low .
The more pronounced effects seem to be achieved by programs that directly removed user fees for access to health services .
Some indication of effect were also observed for programs that conditioned financial incentives on participation in health education and attendance to health care visits .
This finding suggest that the measured effect may be less a consequence of the financial incentive and more due to conditionalities addressing important informational barriers
Background Financial incentives are widely used strategies to alleviate poverty , foster development , and improve health .
Cash transfer programs , microcredit , user fee removal policies and voucher schemes that provide direct or indirect monetary incentives to households have been used for decades in Latin America , Sub-Saharan Africa , and more recently in Southeast Asia .
Until now , no systematic review of the impact of financial incentives on coverage and uptake of health interventions targeting children under 5 years of age has been conducted .
The objective of this review is to provide estimates on the effect of six types of financial incentive programs : ( i ) Unconditional cash transfers ( CT ) , ( ii ) Conditional cash transfers ( CCT ) , ( iii ) Microcredit ( MC ) , ( iv ) Conditional Microcredit ( CMC ) , ( v ) Voucher schemes ( VS ) and ( vi ) User fee removal ( UFR ) on the uptake and coverage of health interventions targeting children under the age of five years .