Workforce health programs have been part of the corporate landscape for decades. While initial efforts were largely focused on executive leadership with specific health risks, these programs have since evolved to include entire workforce populations. Increasingly these programs include initiatives to incentivize “healthy behaviors” with varying levels of health care benefits.
This graphic does a very good job outlining the relationship between behavior and the clinical risks and endpoints that are so prevalent in our disease care system. While I applaud the display of this connection in one of our leading clinical journals, partly out of my hope that frontline care providers are better informed about the significance of primary prevention efforts as an avenue to prevent or delay the onset of chronic conditions, the image shows only the "tip of the iceberg".
Two days ago, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published the first of two reports on the role of social and behavioral factors as determinants of health, and advocated for the inclusion of social and behavioral items in the electronic medical record (EMR). The report is available for free, and you can get it here:
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2014/Capturing-Social-and-Behavioral-Domains-...
Being a physician-physiologist and lifelong sports and recreation enthusiast, it's not surprising that I'm an advocate of exercise as the most important medicine. But if we're going to think of exercise as a medicine, then we must scrutinize the therapeutic uses of exercise - know what health conditions it's good for and know how it can bring harm. This subject is the topic of the 4th edition of a textbook I've recently finished editing for the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).
