Can financial incentives improve health equity?

doi:10.1136/bmj.b3847

Published 24 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3847
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3847

Editorials

Can financial incentives improve health equity?

Evidence shows that they might, if targeted appropriately

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

Recently, much interest has been shown in how financial incentivescan increase health enhancing behaviours.¹ ² ³ Two centres arestudying the subject—the Centre for the Study of Incentivesin Health (a joint initiative between King’s College,Queen Mary, and the London School of Economics; www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/biohealth/research/csincentiveshealth/)and the Center for Health Incentives at the University of Pennsylvania(www.med.upenn.edu/ldichi/). By encouraging healthier behaviours,it is hoped that incentives will help to contain healthcarecosts and improve health. If the incentives motivate peoplein higher socioeconomic groups more than those in lower socioeconomicgroups, however, they could exacerbate health inequalities.In the linked analysis article (doi:10.1136/bmj.b3504), Schmidtand colleagues highlight this as a potential problem in Germany,where a sickness fund rewards people for engaging in preventiveactivities and for minimising use of health care, which mightencourage the less well off to forgo needed health care.¹

These are . . . [Full text of this article]

Adam Oliver, RCUK senior academic fellow

¹ LSE Health, London School of Economics, London WC2A 2AE

a.j.oliver@lse.ac.uk

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