UPHS Weight Loss Study

UPHS Weight Loss Study: Evaluating Methods to Use Health Benefits Design to Encourage Employee Weight Loss

The goal of this study is to compare a novel approach using financial incentives to changes in health benefit design and their impact on employee weight loss.

Employers are increasingly looking for opportunities to encourage weight loss among employees. While studies have shown that financial incentives can effectively encourage weight loss, little is known about their use in health benefits design. The goal of this study is to determine whether a financial incentive program delivered to obese University of Pennsylvania Health System employees can effectively encourage weight loss when compared to changes in health benefit design.

This is a randomized controlled trial involving financial incentives with four study arms: control, delayed gratification, immediate gratification, and financial incentive with frequent feedback. Participation in this study will last about 12 months.

The primary goal of the study is to test the effects of a novel financial incentive program using a lottery with frequent feedback to normal benefit design structures.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Adults age 18-70
• BMI of 30 or above

Exclusion Criteria:

• Inability to consent
• Illiteracy and/or inability to speak, read, and write English
• Participation in another research study

Conditions that would make participation unsafe:

• Current treatment for drug or alcohol use
• Consumption of at least 5 alcoholic drinks per day
• Myocardial infarction or stroke within the past 6 months
• Current addiction to prescription medicines or street drugs
• Serious psychiatric diagnoses (e.g., severe major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia)
• Pregnant or currently breastfeeding
• Diabetic and using any medicine besides metformin to control blood glucose
• Metastatic cancer
• Unstable medical conditions that would likely prevent the subject from completing the study
• Previous diagnosis of an eating disorder
• History of unsafe weight loss behaviors such as binging or the use of laxatives