The American Heart Association is reaching out to employers to help improve the cardiovascular health of American workers.
Noting that expertly designed, comprehensive workplace wellness programs (CWWPs) have the potential to improve employee health and well-being as well as reduce costs associated with poor health, AHA has released a series of standards designed to improve workplace wellness programs. The association will provide toolkits, guidelines, and other resources to assist employers in creating their own workplace wellness programs.
In an advisory statement published in Circulation, Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow of the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues said their new efforts to improve workplace wellness programs will help promote best practices for improving cardiovascular health, as well as establish benchmarks for identifying and recognizing national workplace wellness programs. Together with the American Stroke Association, the AHA’s health assessments are based on the Life’s Simple 7 metrics, a series of evidence-based workplace wellness indicators of cardiovascular health based on the user’s current smoking status, body mass index, physical activity levels, healthy dietary patterns, cholesterol and blood pressure levels, and fasting plasma glucose levels.
“By offering a CWWP recognition program that integrates an organizational culture of health assessment with a cardiovascular health assessment, the AHA/ASA would continue to advocate for achieving ideal cardiovascular health through comprehensive prevention, to provide leadership, and to help set standards in translating prevention and cardiovascular health research into actual practice to support workplaces, employers, employees, and their dependents in the critical goal of building healthier lives free of cardiovascular disease and stroke.”
For the full list of recommendations, read: Circulation 2015.