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Improving ethical review of research involving incentives for health promotion.

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journal contribution
posted on 2012-01-01, 00:00 authored by Alex LondonAlex London, David A. Borasky, Anant Bhan

Within international development [1], public health [2], and clinical medicine [3][5], there is increasing interest in determining whether cash payments or other economic incentives can be used to influence the choices and behavior of individuals and groups in order to promote desired health goals (Box 1). However, a number of complex issues affect the review and approval by research ethics committees (RECs) of research studying the effectiveness of using financial incentives to promote desired health goals. Current ethical and regulatory frameworks regard the provision of gifts or cash payments to participants in human research as potentially problematic. Specifically, these frameworks imply that such incentives may undermine the autonomy of participant choice, hinder the disclosure of medical information, exacerbate social inequalities, or result in the exploitation or degradation of vulnerable populations [6][9]. Typically, these frameworks provide guidance about payment to research participants to reimburse expenses, to compensate for time and effort, to provide insurance coverage, or as an incentive to participate in the research itself. However, the issue of payment as a component of the research intervention is relatively new. RECs thus lack explicit guidance about ethical issues surrounding research that evaluates the use of financial incentives as an intervention to promote health.

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© 2012 London et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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2012-01-01

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