NCT07381049

Effect of Cash Benefits on Health Care Spending

• Status: Active Not Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 3,615 (actual)
• Sponsor: Harvard Medical School (HMS and HSDM) · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: —
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

During the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Chelsea, Massachusetts held a lottery to allocate monthly cash benefits to its residents. Using data from the Chelsea Eats program, the investigators propose to study the impact of the cash benefit on health care spending.

Conditions

• Health Care Costs
• Health Care Utilization

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Cash Benefit	Spending from the cards was not restricted to food but could be spent on anything and anywhere Visa was accepted. The debit cards were credited with the first payment on November 18th, 2020 and the second payment on December 18th, 2020. The program continued with monthly credits through August 2021.
OTHER	No Cash Benefit	No monthly cash benefit.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-07-27
• Primary completion: 2021-12-31
• Completion: 2026-12-01
• First posted: 2026-02-02
• Last updated: 2026-02-05

Locations

3 sites across 1 country: United States