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Financial vs. Non-Financial Rewards for Weight Loss and Weight Maintenance

NCT02957539 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 274

Last updated 2023-07-28

Study results available
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Summary

Three of every four Veterans are overweight or obese, and weight loss is associated with reduced morbidity and mortality. The VA MOVE! program for weight loss is moderately effective but only reaches a small percentage of overweight Veterans. This proposed study will test whether a patient incentive program that gives Veterans non-financial incentives, such as Seattle Mariners baseball tickets, for losing one pound per week over 16 weeks is effective. An effective patient-incentive program could help more Veterans lose weight without requiring a substantial increase in VA staff.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Financial rewards

Veterans in the financial reward arm receive all of the services of the usual care arm, plus rewards that are earned in two ways: an assured portion, and a random portion. For the assured reward, they will receive compensation at the end of each month (defined as a four week period) that they are at or below their target weight. For the random portion, each week that a participant is at or below their target weight, the patient is entered into a drawing to win additional compensation. Over the first eight weeks the patient has a 1-in-8 chance of winning. Over the 17-32 week period, Veterans in this group will receive token incentives for tracking and reporting their weekly weights regardless of whether it was on target. Each week that the patient enters their weight into the portal, s/he will have a 1-in-8 chance to earn the token incentive, such as a t-shirt or movie ticket. The participant will receive reminder text messages.

BEHAVIORAL

Non-Financial rewards

Procedures for the non-financial rewards arm are identical to procedures for the financial reward arm, except that the Veteran will earn points rather than cash. Each weekly random drawing will be for 20 points. Veterans will choose non-financial rewards associated with the number of points they earn.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • VA Office of Research and Development

    lead FED

Principal Investigators

  • Paul L. Hebert, PhD BA · VA Puget Sound Health Care System Seattle Division, Seattle, WA

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
69 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2018-03-21
Primary Completion
2021-03-05
Completion
2021-07-30

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT02957539 on ClinicalTrials.gov