Published 8 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a673
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a673

Feature

Public Health

New York’s road to health

From paying poor families to attend health checks to a law requiring the energy content of food to be shown on menus, New York City is taking a bold and pioneering approach to public health. Karen McColl reports

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The appropriateness of giving people cash incentives to look after their health is fiercely debated.^{1 2} But both critics and enthusiasts of this approach will be watching New York, as one of the world’s richest cities experiments with a programme of conditional cash transfers to break the poverty cycle.

Opportunity NYC is a pilot project that gives cash rewards to poor families for investing in their own health, education, and welfare. Opportunity NYC draws heavily on experience in Mexico, where the first major conditional cash transfer programme, Progresa (now known as Oportunidades), was launched in 1997. The scheme is currently privately funded, but it has the backing of New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and may be rolled out if the results of the pilot study are positive.

Opportunity NYC pays families for, among other things, ensuring that they have health insurance and for using prevention services. For example, families are paid . . . [Full text of this article]

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• McColl, K. (2009). Tom Frieden: Bold pioneer of US public health. BMJ 339: b3565-b3565 [Full text]  
• Lucas, P. J (2008). Family payments: a cautionary tale for policy makers. BMJ 337: a1134-a1134 [Full text]  

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bmj.com, 6 Aug 2008 [Full text]

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