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Walgreens incentivizes healthy habits

Walgreens incentivizes healthy habits

As part of an effort to help its 81 million loyalty cardholders modify behavioral risk factors associated with the most urgent public health issues, Walgreens is launching the “Balance Rewards for healthy choices” initiative.

Participants earn Balance Rewards, which can be redeemed for cash rewards at Walgreens by:

  • Tracking exercise with participating fitness devices like Fitbit, Withings and iHealth, and apps such as MapMyFitness, Lose It!, MyFitnessPal and Run Keeper, and connecting their Balance Rewards account to the tracking device or app.
  • Tracking their blood pressure and glucose levels at home by using iHealth blood pressure and glucose monitors and connecting these devices to their Balance Rewards account.
  • Participating in Walgreens smoking cessation program that’s set to launch in September. It will include smoking cessation content and tools on Walgreens.com, individual support through the Walgreens online Pharmacy Chat; and tools to enable participants to track their progress toward smoking cessation.
  • Using a digitally connected scale or logging results manually participants each time their weight is checked.

The program is based on psychologist Dr. B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits method of behavior change training, which encourages simple steps that lead to a healthier life. Select Walgreens pharmacists and online Pharmacy Chat agents are receiving training led by Dr. Fogg.


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Future enhancements to the program could include rewards for healthy eating habits. In addition, health plans and other payers will be able to define additional activities for their members to perform in order to earn rewards points.

“Through our Balance Rewards for healthy choices initiative, Walgreens encourages participants to adopt healthy actions with the added support and guidance of our pharmacists and Walgreens online Pharmacy Chat agents trained on Dr. Fogg’s Tiny Habits approach," said Kermit Crawford, Walgreens president of pharmacy, health and wellness, in a statement. "This is a perfect fit for a community pharmacy based program in which our pharmacists have frequent contact with consumers."

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