Doctors: The HealthyWage Approach
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HealthyWage believes that the best way to improve America's healthcare system is to target preventable disease. We make it easy for companies to sponsor customers and employees in fun and effective health challenges and contests.
We provide cash incentives, social support, information resources, and goal-setting and tracking technologies to help Americans lose weight, and we currently feature four weight loss challenges:
• BMI Challenge provides $100 from corporate sponsors to obese Americans (nearly one third of the nation) who lose weight.
• SuperSizer challenges members to increase their chances of success by betting $150 or $300 that they will lose weight—with potential rewards of $450 or $1,000 for losing weight.
• Top Motivator rewards $1 for each pound lost to the individual whose friends lose the most weight in the 2010 BMI Challenge.
• Weekly Weigh-in encourages users to check in once a week, report their weight, share weight loss and health tips with a supportive online community—and earn rewards from sponsors.
HealthyWage incentive programs were designed after academic research showed that small cash rewards triple the effectiveness of weight loss programs; that people are more effective at losing weight when they have their own money at risk; and that friends and social networks play a large role in the spread of obesity and will likely play a large role in reversing obesity.
Research & Trends
HealthyWage incentive programs were designed by Dr. Christina Jenkins, based on academic research and trends in the weight loss industry:
Incentives Work at Enhancing Weight Loss
Academic research at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Incentives, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, demonstrates that small monetary incentives can triple the effectiveness of weight loss programs. See JAMA, December 2008, 300(22): 2631-37. The study involved fifty-seven healthy-but-obese participants who each tried one of three weight loss plans: monthly weigh-ins, a lottery incentive program and a deposit contract that allowed for participant matching. The incentive groups lost significantly more weight than the control group (mean, 3.9 lbs). Compared with the control group, the lottery group lost a mean of 13.1 lbs and the deposit contract group lost a mean of 14.0 lbs.
Success of Weight Loss Competitors Suggests ?Betting? Works
HealthyWage competitors demonstrate that monetary commitment and outsized rewards can motivate weight loss. Weight Wins, a British company, recently began offering cash rewards to Britons for weight loss as part of a pilot program sponsored by the UK National Health Service, after the Service found that incentives greatly enhance weight loss. Stickk, an American company founded by Nobel Prize-winning Yale economists, has found success by allowing users to put their own money on the line in private contracts where if the user fails to lose the weight, the money goes to charity. Fatbet.net offers a similar program. HealthyWage goes beyond these competitors models by actually paying people to lose weight with money from corporate sponsors. In addition, Healthywage offers a supportive social environment, goal-setting and tracking tools.
Social Networks Key to Losing Weight
Another study published by Harvard’s Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D in the New England Journal of Medicine found that social networks are a significant factor in the spread of obesity. See NEJM, July 2007, 357: 370-79. The study found that a person's chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval. Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling became obese, the chance that the other would become obese increased by 40%. If one spouse became obese, the likelihood that the other spouse would become obese increased by 37%.
Dr. Christina Jenkins
Chief Medical Officer Christina Jenkins is a member of the adjunct faculty at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, where she was instrumental in building the largest home-based medical program in the country. Prior to her work with HealthyWageTM, Dr. Jenkins worked for New Enterprise Associates, one of the nation’s oldest venture firms, where she evaluated private-company investments in the biopharmaceutical and medical device sectors and assisted preclinical companies with development strategy. She began her career as an analyst with GE Healthcare, where she completed the Financial Management Program and was one of the youngest in company history to earn a Management Award for team leadership. Dr. Jenkins earned her B.S. in Industrial Management from Purdue University and her M.D. from Northwestern University School of Medicine.
