Illinois Wellness Study: A Field Experiment on Participation Incentives and Selection into Workplace Wellness Programs

奖项摘要美国几乎所有的大型企业都提供工作场所健康计划，这些计划被广泛吹捧为改善员工健康和降低医疗保健成本。《平价医疗法案》进一步扩大了政府对健康计划的支持，包括多项鼓励使用健康计划的条款。尽管他们越来越受欢迎，有很少严格的证据对健康的因果影响或这些计划的分布影响。此外，许多公司发现在其劳动力中获得高参与率具有挑战性。该项目旨在提高我们对工作场所健康计划的理解。研究人员将分析随机研究的数据，以估计经济激励对计划参与的影响;调查谁从这些计划中受益;并估计这些计划对医疗保健成本，利用率和工人生产力的影响。这项研究的结果将为旨在提高美国医疗保健提供效率的政策提供信息，从而改善美国人的健康状况并加强美国经济。这项研究项目继续了PI正在进行的关于工作场所健康计划有效性的研究。研究小组将在伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校设计和实施一项实地实验。研究人员将随机将一些员工分配到一个治疗组，他们将有机会参加高质量的工作场所健康计划，其余的则分配到一个对照组。该项目还将随机为治疗组的员工提供不同的货币奖励。在该项目的扩展中，PI将引入额外一年的健康干预，并在初步研究后两年内跟踪结果。将收集治疗组和对照组的结局数据（医疗保健成本、医疗保健利用和劳动生产率）。然后，研究人员将通过比较治疗组中选择参加该计划的员工和选择不参加该计划的员工来估计该计划的分布效果。最后，PI将通过比较治疗组员工与对照组员工的医疗保健成本、利用率和生产率来估计该计划的两年因果效应。治疗组内的差别货币激励将允许估计在不同层次的激励措施的反应弹性。这项研究的结果将有助于美国医疗保健政策的有效发展，从而加强美国经济。

Award Abstract Nearly all large firms in the U.S. offer workplace wellness programs, which are widely touted to improve employee health and reduce health care costs. The Affordable Care Act has further expanded the government's support of wellness programs by including multiple provisions encouraging their use. Despite their growing popularity, there is little rigorous evidence available on the causal effects on health or distributional impacts of these programs. In addition, many firms find it challenging to obtain high participation rates among their workforce. This project seeks to improve our understanding of workplace wellness programs. The researchers will analyze data from a randomized study to estimate the effect of financial incentives on program participation; investigate who benefits from these programs; and estimate the effects of these programs on health care costs, utilization, and worker productivity. The results of this research will inform policies aimed at increasing efficiency in the provision of health care in the US, and in so doing, improving the health of Americans and strengthening the U.S. economy.This research project continues the PIs on-going study on the effectiveness of workplace wellness programs. The research team will design and implement a field experiment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The researchers will randomly assign some employees to a treatment group who will be given the opportunity to participate in a high-quality workplace wellness program, and the rest to a control group. The project will also randomly offer different monetary incentives to employees in the treatment group. In this extension of the project, the PIs will introduce an additional year of the wellness intervention and track outcomes two years after the initial study. Data on outcomes (health care cost, health care utilization, and labor productivity) will be collected for both treatment and control groups. The researchers will then estimate the distributional effects of the program by comparing employees in the treatment group who choose to enroll into the program to those who choose not to enroll. Finally, the PIs will estimate the two-year causal effect of the program by comparing health care costs, utilization, and productivity among employees of the treatment group to employees in the control group. Differential monetary incentives within the treated group will allow for the estimation of response elasticities at various levels of incentives. The results of this research will contribute to the efficient development of health care policy in the US, thus strengthening the US economy.