Employee Health Is Vital to Economic Health
| The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM), the nation's leading medical organization devoted to worker health and safety, recently commented on the link between a healthy workforce and a healthy economy. The policy statement emphasizes health and productivity management (HPM) in the workplace. The ACOEM introduced this concept with the following statement:
In its May 2008 issue, the health policy journal Health Affairs predicted that "if current trends persist, sometime between 2016 and 2020 existing federal revenues will cover only health entitlements, Social Security, debt service, and a smaller defense budget, leaving nothing for anything else, including the environment, education, or new health initiatives." At the same time, the aging and retirement of the baby boomers – the "silver tsunami" – is bringing with it an increased burden of chronic disease that threatens the U.S. pipeline of healthy productive workers. The balance between economic net contributors ("workers") and those dependent on government programs (i.e., Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) is on the verge of a dramatic shift.
Health promotion and early intervention are clearly effective in improving health and controlling health costs in the workplace: some studies have shown a return of as much as $3 per $1 invested.
Read the entire position statement.
Reference:
ACOEM Comments on Healthy Workforce / Healthy Economy: The Role of Health, Productivity, and Disability Management in Addressing the Nation's Health Care Crisis [Position Statement]. American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. November 2008. |
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