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National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Chronic Disease Prevention
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National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Chronic Disease Prevention Home | Contact Us |
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CENTERS FOR
DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION How Can We Entice Employers to Invest in Work Site Health Promotion? Health departments and governments can use many tactics to win corporate America’s support in the battle against heart disease and stroke, according to Ron Z. Goetzel, PhD, Director of the Institute for Health and Productivity Studies at Cornell University and Vice President of Consulting and Applied Research at Medstat in Washington, D.C. Health departments can recognize and reward area employers that are doing an exemplary job of promoting the health of employees. “Reward and publicly recognize them for their accomplishments in health promotion,” he said. “Invite the press to attend the award ceremony.” “This tactic not only honors and compliments those exemplary employers; it also spotlights a state or community’s best practices in work site health promotion,” he noted. “If you share what works in health promotion with the employer community, other companies in that community can learn from best practices and apply methods with a proven track record.” Work site health promotion efforts can also have benefits on a national scale. Dr. Goetzel cited a March 15, 2004, Washington Post article describing health improvement efforts in Poland as contrasted with almost no effort to improve population health in Russia. “Poland put a lot of effort into prevention by promoting good nutrition, exercise, and smoking cessation,” he said, “and their life expectancy and quality of life has improved. However, Russia placed no emphasis on health promotion. Their life expectancy and quality of life has deteriorated, and this has also affected the productivity of workers.” Bridging the Gap Between Government and Business Dr. Goetzel has worked with many businesses, governments, managed care organizations, and other clients to bridge the gap between academia, the business community, and the health care policy world. He has developed eight recommendations, summarized below, that governments can follow to entice more employers to offer effective health promotion programs: 1. Provide tax incentives to companies that offer credible and effective health promotion and disease prevention programs to their employees. These incentives can take the form of tax credits or rebates that partially reimburse companies (up to a certain limit) for the expense of developing and operating credible and effective health promotion and disease prevention programs. To receive these tax incentives, companies would need to provide documentation that their programs meet specific quality and effectiveness criteria established by an independent national credentialing organization. Governments can also educate employers about the types of incentives that encourage employees to participate in health promotion programs—for example, discounts, credits, or rebates on medical plan premiums. Incentives should be structured so that they promote participation in programs rather than changes in biometric measures, such as weight loss. 2. Communicate with employers and educate them about the benefits of health promotion and disease prevention. Governments can educate employers about the organizational stressors that may increase risk factors. Once educated, employers will become more motivated to seek and provide opportunities for health improvement and risk reduction. Governments also should educate the public health community about efficient processes that business leaders use to diagnose problems, review options, make decisions, and carry out actions. It would benefit government officials (especially those in public health) and business leaders to begin a meaningful dialogue focused on health issues facing American businesses and how federal agencies can help businesses make informed decisions regarding health care. For example, business leaders might ask for help in deciding which treatments for any given condition are most cost-effective or seek advice about the safety of certain medical treatments. Or they might offer to share insights on how they have improved the quality of health promotion programs or corrected problems within their companies. Open communication between business leaders and government leaders might be one of the best ways to more directly involve companies in improving the health of employees and communities. 3. Honor and reward America’s healthiest companies. For the past 10 years, the C. Everett Koop National Health Award has been presented to American companies that have documented improved employee health and cost savings resulting from their work site health promotion and disease prevention programs. This annual prize should be elevated in prestige and stature by having the President of the United States confer the award to winning companies at a highly publicized award ceremony. 4. Establish a blue ribbon panel to study the impact of health promotion and disease prevention on America’s competitiveness in the global economic community. The President can also make health promotion and disease prevention a national priority by establishing such a panel. This would highlight the importance of health promotion and disease prevention programs and their relationship to self-care and personal responsibility initiatives directed at individual and family health. Elevating the discussion to the level of national debate and commentary will draw more attention to the importance that health promotion and disease prevention plays in improving the health of the nation.5. Invest in better research performed in corporate settings. Most studies to evaluate health promotion programs have been private-sector initiatives funded by private sources. Consequently, even though the research is growing in both volume and rigor, it is still relatively primitive when compared with large-scale government-funded studies. Government agencies should establish special research funds that are earmarked for studying the science underlying work site health promotion and disease prevention programs as well as the effectiveness of these programs in improving health, lowering costs, and increasing worker productivity. Researchers in charge of evaluations should be encouraged to use the most rigorous statistical methods available to study these programs so that conclusions are based on strong scientific evidence rather than conjecture, anecdote, or belief. 6. When evaluating health promotion and disease prevention programs, use accepted analytic methods that focus on safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness. Growing evidence suggests that corporate health promotion and disease prevention programs are not only cost-effective but also cost-beneficial. But proving that a program is cost-beneficial is far more difficult than proving it is cost-effective. These programs should be judged by using the same criteria of efficacy that are applied to other health interventions—namely safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness. If health promotion and disease prevention programs are placed side by side with more traditional medical treatment programs, using accepted cost-effectiveness analytic methods, their economic value and justification should become evident. Rather than trying to prove these programs always save money, companies might find it sufficient to prove that they demonstrate a better use of money.7. Provide talking points to corporate executives so they can advocate health promotion and disease prevention programs and convey how important these programs are to the success of American business. Governments need to educate company leaders about the advantages of providing health promotion and disease prevention programs to employees. Federal agencies can sponsor focused seminars and business roundtable meetings, and leadership forums can be sponsored by federal agencies. Equipped with knowledge and appropriate talking points, corporate leaders can become enthusiastic and visible spokespersons for health promotion and disease prevention initiatives within their own organizations and to other businesses. They can rally support from nonprofit organizations, the media, and various industry groups, all of whom can exert enormous influence to change public perceptions of the importance of these programs.
8. Influence the development and measurement of corporate health promotion and disease prevention programs. Government agencies should take a more active role in helping employers who want to develop, manage, and evaluate health promotion and disease prevention programs. Government officials can fund large-scale studies that evaluate various aspects of these programs and publicize their results more broadly. For example, studies could focus on the use of tax or other financial incentives that encourage more businesses to develop health promotion and disease prevention programs. Government agencies also can act as models for effective health promotion and disease prevention programs by improving the quality of programs offered to civilian and armed forces employees and by developing and promoting best-practice programs to be emulated by employers in the private sector. In addition, government officials should closely examine the relationship between statutory safety program requirements, such as those mandated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and their possible links to health promotion and disease prevention initiatives. Government agencies should provide seed money to employers who want to examine the effectiveness of health promotion and disease prevention in preventing work-related injuries and illness. New government initiatives in health promotion and disease prevention should include experts in the health promotion industry as much as possible. Dr. Goetzel is optimistic that in the future, more government and business leaders will work together to tackle major health threats such as heart disease, stroke, and obesity. “Most Americans spend a huge portion of their life at work,” he said, “making work site health initiatives a powerful vehicle for reaching millions of people with vital public health messages.” |
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Privacy
Policy | Accessibility This page last reviewed August 30, 2004 United
States Department of Health and Human Services |
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