Building on a Point-of-purchase Intervention to Encourage Healthy Food Choices
Trial Snapshot
- Phase
- Not Applicable
- Status
- Completed
- Enrollment
- 2,672
- Locations
- 1
- Primary Endpoint
- Employee purchases of healthy (green-labeled) items
Study Overview
Brief Summary
This study builds on the framework of a previously implemented color-coded food labeling intervention in a hospital cafeteria by testing the incremental effectiveness of providing employees with individual feedback and incentives for increasing healthy purchases in a 3-arm randomized controlled trial. The investigators hypothesize that employees assigned to receive feedback will increase healthy purchases more than employees who receive no contact and that employees who receive feedback plus incentives will increase healthy purchases more than those who receive feedback alone.
Study Design
- Study Type
- Interventional
- Allocation
- Randomized
- Intervention Model
- Parallel
- Primary Purpose
- Prevention
- Masking
- None
Eligibility Criteria
- Ages
- 18 Years to — (Adult, Older Adult)
- Sex
- All
- Accepts Healthy Volunteers
- Yes
Inclusion Criteria
- •Employee at Massachusetts General Hospital who uses a cafeteria debit card to pay for cafeteria purchases
Exclusion Criteria
- •Employees who do not have a cafeteria debit card
- •Employees with cafeteria debit card but who use it fewer than 3 times a month for the 3 months prior to start of trial
Arms & Interventions
Feedback only
Subjects receive feedback letters about the proportion of green, yellow, and red purchases in the cafeteria per month with comparisons to "all employees" and to the "healthiest employees eaters"
Intervention: Feedback letters (Behavioral)
Feedback plus incentives
Subjects receive feedback letters plus small incentives to increase healthy (green-labeled) purchases in the next month
Intervention: Feedback plus incentives (Behavioral)
Control group
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Employee purchases of healthy (green-labeled) items
Time Frame: 6 months
Secondary Outcomes
- Employee purchases of unhealthy (red-labeled) items(6 months)
Investigators
Anne N. Thorndike, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital