CDC Worksite Health Tools Assist with Business Case-Making

Dr. Kimberly Jinnett
CDC Logo

The CDC has an assessment tool for worksites, the CDC Worksite Health ScoreCard (HSC),  freely available to employers interested in getting a snapshot of how their organization measures up against evidence-based health promotion and protection practices across several disease states.  The tool comes with helpful instructions and tutorials on how to use the tool and its results toward the goal of employee health improvement.  The tool covers a range of organizational health policies including paid time off, flexible work scheduling, workplace safety and other policies that stretch beyond, but include, more typical offerings so common in many organizations. 

The tool provides a reasonable starting point for an organization to begin assessing their company's approach to worksite wellness, particularly in the disease areas covered by the tool.  Depending on the prevalence of specific medical conditions in a workforce, employers may also find useful information in the systematic reviews of evidence assembled as part of The Community Guide on what works to promote health.

The CDC's efforts in these areas and with one of its newest intiatives, Total Worker Health, are beginning to build better evidence and tools to help employers make the business case for employee health investment.

If you have ideas or expertise in this area or would like to be considered as a guest blogger we would love to hear about it.