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Making medications stick: improving medication adherence by highlighting the personal health costs of non-compliance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2019

JON M. JACHIMOWICZ Open the ORCID record for JON M. JACHIMOWICZ [Opens in a new window] ,
JOE J. GLADSTONE ,
DAN BERRY ,
CHARLOTTE L. KIRKDALE ,
TRACEY THORNLEY  and
ADAM D. GALINSKY
JON M. JACHIMOWICZ*
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
JOE J. GLADSTONE*
Affiliation:
University College London, London, UK
DAN BERRY
Affiliation:
UK Government Department of Health and Social Care, London, UK
CHARLOTTE L. KIRKDALE
Affiliation:
Boots UK, Nottingham, UK
TRACEY THORNLEY
Affiliation:
Boots UK, Nottingham, UK and University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
ADAM D. GALINSKY
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
*
*Correspondence to: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Columbia University, 116th St & 3022 Broadway, New York, NY10027, USA. Email: jmj2183@columbia.edu
Joe J. Gladstone, University College London, Level 38, 1 Canada Square, Rm NE3, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5AB, UK. Email: j.gladstone@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Poor compliance of prescription medication is an ongoing public health crisis. Nearly half of patients do not take their medication as prescribed, harming their own health while also increasing public health care costs. Despite these detrimental consequences, prior research has struggled to establish cost-effective and scalable interventions to improve adherence rates. We suggest that one reason for the limited success of prior interventions is that they make the personal health costs of non-adherence insufficiently prominent, while a higher saliency of these costs may motivate patients to adhere more. In the current research, we test whether an intervention that makes the personal health costs of non-compliance more salient for patients will increase their medication adherence. To do so, we conducted a randomized controlled trial with 16,191 patients across 278 UK pharmacies over a 9-month time period and manipulated the perceived consequences of medication non-adherence. We find that patients who received a treatment highlighting the personal health costs of non-compliance were significantly more likely to adhere to their medication than three comparison groups (odds ratio = 1.84, 95% confidence interval = 1.37–2.47). Shifting patients’ focus to the personal health costs of non-compliance may thus offer a potentially cost-effective and scalable approach to improving medication adherence.

Type
Article
Information
Behavioural Public Policy , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 396 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

‡

Denotes equal first authorship

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