Randomized trial of four financial-incentive programs for smoking cessation
Halpern and colleagues randomly assigned CVS Caremark employees and their relatives and friends to one of four financial-incentive programmes for smoking cessation or to usual care. Two programmes were aimed at individuals and two at groups of six, and in each pair one offered a reward of about 800 dollars for quitting and the other a refundable deposit with reward payments on top. Of 2,538 participants, 90.0 per cent of those assigned to reward programmes accepted, against 13.7 per cent of those assigned to deposit programmes. In intention-to-treat analyses sustained abstinence at six months was higher in all four programmes than under usual care, reward programmes did better than deposit programmes, and group programmes did no better than individual ones.
Halpern and colleagues randomly assigned CVS Caremark employees and their relatives and friends to one of four financial-incentive programmes for smoking cessation or to usual care. Two programmes were aimed at individuals and two at groups of six, and in each pair one offered a reward of about 800 dollars for quitting and the other a refundable deposit with reward payments on top. Of 2,538 participants, 90.0 per cent of those assigned to reward programmes accepted, against 13.7 per cent of those assigned to deposit programmes. In intention-to-treat analyses sustained abstinence at six months was higher in all four programmes than under usual care, reward programmes did better than deposit programmes, and group programmes did no better than individual ones.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-27 via OpenAlex.
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doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1414293. The acceptor rates (52.3 and 17.1 per cent) are from a Pharmaceutical Journal report.