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How Incentives Can Drive Positive Health Outcomes

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How Incentives Can Drive Positive Health Outcomes

The use of financial incentives to change health-related behaviors is becoming increasingly common. However, the results of incentive schemes in the past have been mixed.

One reason may be that the underlying psychology behind incentive programs still needs to be fully understood. For example, a lottery-based financial incentive scheme can encourage people to attend eye screening appointments but only increases vaccination rates if the incentive is immediate.

Motivate Patients

Incentives are often a key driver for improving patient behaviors and healthcare outcomes. Patients may be offered incentives to sign up for a wellness program or participate in a vaccination campaign. Employers may provide employees with cash rewards to encourage healthy eating and exercise. Many ‘know your HIV’ programs in developing countries offer incentives to ensure people pick up their results.

Payment per achievement, in the form of payments to physicians for performing certain procedures or achieving certain quality metrics, is one method healthcare systems use to motivate providers to deliver value-based care.

But how much do these incentives work? Studies have shown that incentives’ effectiveness depends on the reward behavior and subtle design details, such as how an incentive is delivered or framed. Using behavioral science to drive these programs could yield better results and cost savings. For example, one controlled study found that a targeted, micro-incentive approach generated eight dollars in cost savings for every dollar spent on the program.

Encourage Adherence

Incentives can be used to encourage people to stick with their health goals. This can be done through various approaches, including price signals such as sin taxes or subsidies and commitment devices such as public contracts where individuals agree to change their behavior for a set period in return for additional benefits.

Several studies have reported that incentives informed by behavioral economics can improve adherence. However, these incentives have rarely been tested among youth living with HIV despite the high need for enhanced compliance.

One study implementing an incentive-based model to increase adherence reported that the program improved viral load suppression outcomes. The study also included several complementary measures, such as regular client-centered adherence meetings, monthly adherence audits, and feedback reports. Incentive magnitudes vary widely across studies, with payments ranging from annual provider income. However, most studies need to report detailed information regarding the amount of incentives and how they are paid.

Encourage Routine Check-Ups

Incentives are one route to encouraging routine check-ups and other trends, such as value-driven purchasing, patient-centered care and clinical performance management. But it’s important to consider how incentives are framed and designed. Using price signals to encourage health behaviors can be successful; for example, increasing the cost of tobacco and alcohol has been shown to reduce consumption.

However, introducing rewards can also backfire. For example, freebies like doughnuts or movie tickets can discourage people from getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

Incentives can be offered to individuals, groups of providers or even entire health systems. They can be tied to individual, group, or network performance markers or even at the practice or integrated delivery system level. The size of these incentives varies widely, and their frequency can be monthly, quarterly or annually. Moreover, linking incentives to health outcomes or measures can be demotivating because improvements tend to plateau over time. Instead, focusing on measurable improvements in quality or cost may be more effective.

Encourage Self-Care

Incentives are often viewed as encouraging healthy behavior and reducing overall healthcare costs. However, supporters and critics disagree on whether incentives are appropriate and effective. Supporters generally believe that people should be encouraged where possible into behaviors that promote improved health outcomes and that appropriately targeted incentive schemes can provide a form of symmetric or libertarian paternalism that steers people toward better choices without necessarily limiting what those choices are.

For example, one study randomly assigned participants to receive0 cash incentive for visiting their primary care provider (PCP) after enrolling in a community-based primary care program. These low-income patients were newly eligible for free or low-cost health insurance because the state had not relaxed its stringent Medicaid eligibility requirements.

The researchers found that a small financial incentive increased the number of first-time visits relative to the non-incentivized group. They also found that incentives framed as gains were more effective than those framed as losses.

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10 Benefits of charcoal soap and side effects

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10 Benefits of long bell peppers

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Discover the 10 health benefits of long bell peppers.

The long peppers may sound unfamiliar to some, but not in the ears of the Javanese. In Java, it is also known as Javanese pepper, with the scientific name of Piper Retrofractum Vahl.

It is considered as a spice and is commonly used for jamu, which is an Indonesian traditional herbal drink, hence its nickname is “cabe jamu” or jamu pepper.

If you want to learn more about long peppers, you are absolutely on the right track! For your information, long peppers grow at a maximum altitude of 600 m with 1,259 mm/year of rain. Anyway, what exactly is a long pepper?

Long peppers are also known as Balinese pepper or Indian pepper, following their original roots in South Asia, particularly India and Sri Lanka.

In India, long peppers are called ‘pippali’. Long peppers have four main functions, especially as a home remedy, cooking ingredient, medicinal herb, and catalyst to enhance the effects of other herbs.

The benefits of Javanese long peppers are somewhat similar to the health benefits of Indian long peppers.

Just as their scientific name suggests, long peppers contain piperine. Piperine is an alkaloid that works as a stimulant for poor blood circulation. Piperine is also found in black pepper and is also responsible for making both of them spicy.

Now here is the main question; Do long peppers have other uses besides being spices and a cooking ingredient? Yes, it does, and here are the health benefits of long pepper.

10 health benefits of long bell peppers

1.- Good for liver ailments

• Liver disease arises from our habit of indulging in unhealthy junk foods.

• At the end of the day, the liver becomes overworked.

• Long bell peppers balance the liver’s workload by removing toxins that have built up in the liver and that have been produced by digesting these types of foods.

• Here are also the best quick way to detox the liver after several years of drinking.

2.- Helps to lose weight

• The long pepper can burn fatty acids similar to other types of pepper without any side effects.

• In fact, it is considered a safer and healthier alternative compared to its clinical counterparts.

3.- Reduces the risk of diabetes

• Like the health benefits of red rice for diabetics, long bell peppers help alleviate diabetes by regulating the rate of glucose released into the blood system.

• Long peppers also stimulate insulin production.

• That is the main reason why long pepper is highly recommended for diabetic patients.

4.- Decreases bacterial infection

• The risk of bacterial infection may incline as the daily temperature increases.

• Unhygienic food, as well as unsterile water, can be prone to bacterial infection, causing an upset stomach.

• Long peppers can be used to counter these occurrences.

5.- Serves as a cough treatment

Long peppers treat a cough by making it a simple remedy. This is how you do it:

Step 1: Take 1 to 2 grams of the spice and fry it with a little ghee. Ghee is a kind of Indian butter.

Step 2: Bring it in while it cools.

If ghee is not available, you can use honey instead.

6.- Relieves indigestion

• The content of long peppers is capable of curing digestive problems.

7.- Decrease fever

• The antiseptic and antiseptic properties of long pepper can reduce fever or relax the throat.

• You can easily reduce a fever by mixing long pepper with a hot bowl of soup.

8.- Relieves toothache

• You can also cure a toothache by making a paste with pepper, salt, and water.

9.- Cure diarrhea

• Diarrhea can be cured by consuming a long pepper soup.

10.- Relieves asthma

• Long peppers are an alternative to relieve occasional asthma attacks and other asthma symptoms.

• However, you should not use it as a substitute for respiratory medicine.

How to use long peppers for traditional cures

About the previous pointers on the health benefits of long pepper, here are the simple recipes to make your long pepper remedy.

1.- To lower the fever

• Step 1 – Prepare 3g of dried long peppers

• Step 2 – Smooth until it reaches its softest state.

• Step 3: Infuse with hot water and consume.

• Despite its hot taste, it is suitable for both children and adults.

2.- It is a cure for toothache

• Step 1 – Prepare 3 long pepper leaves

• Step 2: squash them, but not to their smoothest shape.

• Step 3: prepare it in warm water

• Step 4: Use the gargle formula. Do it regularly until the toothache is completely gone.

3.- To overcome «Masuk Angin»

Masuk angin is an Indonesian term to describe the uneven distribution of gases within the body characterized by cold-like symptoms.

It has no direct translation into English, and no specific knowledge of this ‘disease’, therefore making ‘masuk angin’ is a large loose term. Long peppers can be treated ‘masuk angin’ by following this simple formula:

• Step 1 – Prepare 3g of long peppers, some brown sugar, ginger, and “temulawak” (Curcuma Zanthorrhiza).

• Step 2 – Boil until everything is softened and add warm water.

• Step 3 – Drink that formula while it’s still hot.

4.- Prevents abdominal spasm

• Step 1: Take 3 long pepper leaves and add a glass of water.

• Step 2: Boil both of them fully and let them cool for a while.

• Step 3: consume completely.

5.- Clean the postpartum ovary

• Step 1: Prepare 3 grams of long pepper roots.

• Step 2: Add warm water and bring to a full boil.

• Step 3 – Filter the water when you are done.

• Step 4: Consume the boiled water until done. It is suggested to consume it while it is still hot.

Those are just the healthy creations you can make with long bell peppers. The recipes are not proprietary so you can easily adjust them to better suit your preferences or requirements.

However, it is still highly recommended that you follow exactly what is written above. In addition to the long bell pepper uses listed above, there will be more below, however, the ones below are not specifically categorized by disease.

Generic long pepper recipe

Step 1 – Boil 150cc of water.

• Step 2 – Make it with 4 grams of pepper powder.

• Step 3: Consume while hot to get your maximum benefit.

If there are still long pepper powders left, you can also use them like this:

• Fill it inside the capsules for consumption at any time.

• Apply the powders directly to the affected area for toothache.

• Use it to treat swollen gums.

• In addition to health, long peppers are equally useful for planting and soil fertility.

• Thirty-eight uses of long peppers can be obtained by using them in a “jamu” or a traditional herbal drink, which has the potential to cure practically everything but the insecticide.

• Long pepper does not work with insecticide because it kills the reaction of the insecticide inside the plants.

Those are just the top long pepper health benefits that may sound unfamiliar to you, especially among the youngest these days. Either way, hope it helps!

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Ozempic for weight loss

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