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Research |
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A Randomized Incentive Based Weight Loss Trial in Singapore |
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Listen to what the team aims and expects of their research project
 Eric A Finkelstein |
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Abstract
Over one-third of the populations in Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, urban China, and India have BMIs over 25.0, as do over 20% of adults in Thailand and the Philippines. As a result of rising rates of obesity, nearly all countries in Asia are struggling with large increases in the prevalence of diabetes and other chronic diseases. In addition to the health consequences, obesity imposes significant costs to governments, insurers and employers through increased medical expenditures, absenteeism, and presenteeism. The encouraging news is that as little as 5% weight loss can lead to sustained health improvements. Evaluations of many weight reduction programs have shown weight losses of this level or higher. However, uptake in these programs is low and, in the majority of cases, the weight loss is not sustained. Yet, in prior short term studies we have shown that economic incentives can increase both the uptake and effectiveness of obesity and other behavioural health interventions. It is possible that these incentives, if used in conjunction with existing evidence-based programs and extended to longer time periods, could encourage long-term sustained weight losses that would lead to significant health and economic improvements. Furthermore, behavioural economic theory predicts that lotteries and other behavioural strategies may work better than traditional cash payments, although no direct test of this hypothesis has been conducted. We propose to fill these gaps by conducting a three arm randomized trial to test the extent to which traditional or behavioural economic incentives, when combined with an existing evidence-based program, will improve weight loss and weight loss maintenance. The growing obesity epidemic, the high costs of obesity, and the fact that the incentive program is designed to be close to cost neutral, suggest that this research has high potential to have a significant public health impact in Singapore and the region. |
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Team Members |
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Eric A Finkelstein
Associate Professor
Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School
Singapore |
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Daniel Wai Chun Hang
Consultant
Department of Endocrinology, Singapore General Hospital
Singapore |
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Tham Kwang Wei
Clinical Teacher, Council Member, Board Member
Yong Loo Lin Sch of Medicine, Specialist Training Committee (Endocrinology)SASO
Singapore |
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Shankar Pasupathy
Consultant Surgeon
Department of General Surgery, Singapore General Hospital
Singapore |
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Benjamin A Haaland
Assistant Professor
Centre for Quantitative Medicine/Office of Clinical Science/Duke-NUS GMS
Singapore |
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