March 12, 2009

Incentives for Prevention: Health England Report No.3

Health England, the national reference group for health and wellbeing, published their report titled Incentives for Prevention in March 2009. Their report focuses on the way in which economic incentives are structured and how this structure can play an important role in behavioral responses. The report reviews some information about economic inventive schemes and also considers the potential role of agencies involved in policy that directly or indirectly affects health in these areas. Health England applied five criteria to help them identify relative strengths and weaknesses of different schemes: their effectiveness, their cost relative to effectiveness, their impact on equity, their feasibility and their impact on individual and local autonomy. The five schemes were targeted at NHS commissioners, other government agencies, providers, employers and individuals. A summary of the performance of the schemes against the criteria are presented in Table 1 at the end of the report.