Wellness at the Worksite

Prologue: A nationwide survey of worksite wellness programs in 1985, the first of its kind, found that nearly two-thirds of responding employers offered at least one health promotion activity to their workers. While worksite wellness programs hold promise to control employers' health expenditures, which often exceed several thousand dollars per employee, few corporations rely on them as a major cost containment strategy. Whether health promotion produces cost savings is the focus of the current debate. To address key issues, the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has entered into a co-operative agreement with the Washington Business Group on Health (WBGH) to develop a national worksite health promotion resource center. WBGH is consulting with employers, universities, unions, associations, and other business groups in creating the center, which is scheduled to open in September 1990. In this article, Kenneth Warner provides an overview of health promotion activities at the workplace. He characterizes the conventional wisdom about the economics of health promotion as follows: “Health promotion modifies behavior; improved (that is, healthier) behavior reduces health services use; hence, health promotion will contain health care costs.” Warner notes that additional research is needed to determine the effectiveness of health promotion programs, in terms of both positive health behavior changes and cost savings potential. He also offers his prognosis for future developments in worksite health promotion. Warner, who received his doctorate in economics from Yale University, is a professor of public health policy at the University of Michigan, where he has been on the faculty since 1972. He is currently a senior fellow at the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Michigan. He served as senior scientific editor of the twenty-fifth anniversary surgeon generals report on smoking and health, released in January 1989. That same year, he was awarded the Surgeon General's Medallion by C. Everett Koop.