April 9, 2014

paying heroin addicts to be vaccinated

Paying people to change their behaviour for the good of public health is always controversial, as recent interest around breastfeeding has shown and there is always debate over where the line should be drawn. Researchers, publishing in The Lancet, have been assessing the benefit of paying heroin addicts to be vaccinated for hepatitis B (HBV).

Around ¼ million people in the UK are injecting drug users and it is estimated that 50 – 60,000 of them are infected with HBV, which can cause liver cancer or cirrhosis in chronic carriers of the virus. Aside from the harm caused to the patient the treatment is extremely expensive. Any increase in vaccine uptake could therefore have a huge impact for individuals and the NHS.

The authors of The Lancet study came to the Science Media Centre to answer questions such as:

• How much of an impact does paying people actually have?
• Are there unintended consequences of using financial incentives?
• What are the future plans for this scheme? Will it be rolled out across the UK? Will it be expanded to pay people to stop taking heroin?
• What do these results mean for other public health initiatives? Should we be paying people to change other behaviours?

Speakers: 

Dr Nicola Metrebian, Senior Research Fellow in Addictions, National Addiction Centre, King’s College London

Prof. Stephen Pilling, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director, Centre for Outcomes, Research & Effectiveness (CORE), UCL

Prof John Strang, Head of the National Addiction Centre, King’s College London

Dr Timothy Weaver, Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Services Research in the Centre for Mental Health, Imperial College London