Explores why businesses should focus on strategies that change policies, systems & environments within workplace, as well as advocate for community-wide changes that make their employees healthier when not at work!

1. Businesses & Public Health:
Partnering for Prevention
Fran Butterfoss, PhD Coalitions Work

2. Why Should Businesses Promote
Health Outside of the Workplace?
 Health of businesses depends on
employees’ health
 Poor health costs businesses
 Prevention saves businesses money
 It will foster healthier communities

3. Health of businesses depends
on health of their employees!
Heart Disease
High Blood
Pressure
Overweight
or Obese w/1
Chronic Dz
Overweight
or Obese
% of Workforce Affected
25%
33%
50%
66%

4. Poor health costs businesses!
• 50% of profits spent on health care
• Cost to employers of obesity among
full-time employees = $73.1 billion/yr
• 75% of health care costs are from
diseases/conditions that are
preventable
Public Health Institute. (2013). Prevention Means Business.
http://bit.ly/1v33T8R

5. Prevention saves businesses
money!
 absenteeism due to sick family
members
 costs of family health care benefits
 subsidies for Medicare, Medicaid &
the uninsured
• Healthier pool of potential employees
Public Health Institute. (2013). Prevention Means Business.
http://bit.ly/1v33T8R

6. “Business leaders . . . can do
everything right to influence the
health and productivity of their
captured workforce at the worksite,
but if that same workforce lives in
unhealthy communities, employer
investments can be lost or certainly
weakened.”
Andrew Webber, Former CEO
National Business Coalition on Health

7. It will build healthier communities!
• Increased buying power & consumption,
from improved community health & wealth
• Improved community relations & good will
• Positions businesses as change leaders in
their communities
Public Health Institute. (2013). Prevention Means Business. http://bit.ly/1v33T8R

8. What Does It Take?
Join a
business
health care
coalition
Partner with
public health
organizations
Support
strategies that
improve
health
Support
public health
infrastructure

9. Join a Business Health Coalition to:
• Amplify businesses’ power & impact
• Increase employer purchase power
• Build/strengthen public-private partnerships
• Position businesses as community change
leaders
• Address economic development, education
& other issues that affect businesses

10. Partner with Public Heath to:
• Add new perspective on mutual benefits,
such as health & safety, worksite wellness
& economic development
• Build a stronger evidence-base for practices
in & outside workplaces
• Develop metrics for absenteeism &
productivity that help employers identify
where to get best ROI

11. Support Strategies that Improve
Health:
Implement organizational & environmental
changes in workplaces that prevent obesity &
improve health:
 Healthy foods for meetings/events, in vending
machines & cafeterias
Open stairwells & walking paths
Support for active transportation

12. Support Public Health
Infrastructure:
Advocate for funding public health programs &
national food & nutrition programs
(Prevention programs can show a 5:1 ROI)

13. Draw on
your
Strengths
 Relationships
 Resources
 Results

14. ‘Although public health and the
business sector each bear a
responsibility to assure the health
of our nation, only by exercising
those responsibilities together will
we be able to contribute fully to
that goal. “
Elizabeth Majestic
CDC, National Center for Chronic
Disease Prevention & Health

15. Coalition Building Resources
• Butterfoss, FD. Ignite! Getting Your Community
Coalition “Fired Up” for Change. AuthorHouse, 2013.
• CADCA - http://www.cadca.org/
• Coalitions Work – http://www.coalitionswork.com
• Community Toolbox - http://www.ctb.edu
• Public Health Institute. (2013). Prevention Means
Business. http://bit.ly/1v33T8R