Money For Weight Loss Works

More and more companies are now offering novel weight loss incentive schemes in an effort to encourage healthier habits in the workplace. A new study, carried out by researchers at the Universiy of Michigan, found that cash rewards are an effective form of weight loss incentive.

With the Affordable Care Act, more employers will be able to offer large cash incentives to encourage healthy behaviors, such as losing weight or quitting smoking for their employees.

However, the study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that weight loss is far more successful when awards are given based on group performance, as opposed to an individual's performance.  

In the study, when cash incentives were based on group performance, the employees lost almost three times more weight than those based on a single person's performance.

According to the lead author of the study, Jeffrey T. Kullgren, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., health services researcher in the VA Center for Clinical Management Research and the division of general medicine in the U-M Medical School:

"There is broad and growing enthusiasm for rewarding healthy behaviors in the workplace, but there is little evidence on the effects of these strategies. We anticipate more employers to offer these awards in an effort to help control health care costs while also improving the health of employees.

We found that these incentives were substantially more powerful when delivered in groups, which has important implications for both policymakers and the employers who are considering offering them."

The study involved assessing the effectiveness of two different weight loss incentive strategies in Philadelphia, USA.

One of the groups included individuals who were given a cash reward of $100 each month they reached their weight-loss goals.

The other group involved putting individuals into groups of five with a cash incentive of $500 split among those who reached their weight loss goal. This approach allowed people to potentially win more than $100 if the others in their group failed to meet their target.

After 6 months, those who were part of the group approach lost much more weight than those who were part of the single approach.

Kullgren, a researcher for the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, said:

"Despite the health and economic consequences of obesity, the problem isn't getting any better, and there is great interest in identifying new approaches to  combating this major health issue in our country.

Approaches such as 'The Biggest Loser' have received popular attention as ways to harness group dynamics to encourage weight loss, but the winner-take-all nature could be discouraging for everyone but the most successful person. We need more data to compare how different group-based approaches stack up against each other." 

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was created on the 23rd of March, 2010 to improve and widen health coverage to more Americans. The Act will soon allow employers to reward their employees who meet health targets or participate in wellness programs.

Financial incentives enhance weight-loss programs - The Mayo Clinic

The Mayo clinic carried out a similar study recently in which participants were placed into four groups to lose weight. Two groups were offered financial incentives while the other two were not. Participants in all four groups were given information on healthy behaviors and how to lose weight effectively and healthily.

Over a period of 52 weeks, those in the financial-incentives groups lost an average of 9 pounds, compared to about 2 pounds in the other groups.

The researchers were surprised that it did not take much money to make a difference. In this experiment, participants gained $20 if they met their goal for the month and had to pay $20 dollars if they failed. The money from those who failed went towards paying for those who succeeded each month.



Written by Joseph Nordqvist

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