Healthy Incentives

Healthy Incentives is an innovative project to support and reward healthy behaviour.

Health Launchpad is working with Birmingham East and North NHS Primary Care Trust to design the venture, which will be run as a social venture, jointly owned by the PCT and Health Launchpad. Surpluses made will be reinvested into improving services.

The aim of Healthy Incentives is to develop and administer a reward scheme to encourage and support people to lead healthy lives. The programme will work with people to discuss and understand their health goals, and will support and reinforce existing opportunities for healthy behaviour provided either by the PCT or by other organisations in the community. If the project is successful, the plan is to roll it out nationally, offering it as a service for other PCTs to commission.

The scheme will provide participants with points in return for pursuing healthy behaviours, such as stopping smoking, exercising regularly, reducing body-mass index, undergoing screening, and managing long-term conditions appropriately. These points can be redeemed for valuable rewards – including goods in local shops and bespoke experiences.

New participants will receive an induction into the scheme, discussing their personal health goals and explaining how points are awarded. They also receive access to resources to help them change their behaviours – this could include existing resources provided by the NHS or the third sector (such as smoking cessation schemes or the Expert Patient Programme).

The project draws on a wide range of recent research by organisations including the King's Fund and Health England, on the experience of health reward schemes in Germay, South Africa and the United States, and on the experience of commercial reward schemes.

Initial pilots are scheduled to begin later in 2008.