Quantifying Value of Worksite Well-Being Programs With a Health Equity Lens: It's Time to Raise the Bar.

Calls to address workforce health inequities have been met with expanded well-being programming, without an assessment of programming relevance or evaluation of equity-related outcomes. The goal of this commentary is to summarize current practices and gaps in evaluation of well-being programs, provide evidence supporting the need for broader participation in well-being offerings, and make recommendations to incorporate health equity measures into planning and evaluation efforts conducted by both employers and vendors. Data sharing, expanded measurement, more rigorous evaluation methods, and alignment of goals are some of the recommendations to better address health inequities and differential participation among employees.

Student awareness of campus medical amnesty policies.

ObjectiveExamine students' awareness of medical amnesty policies and the influence of policy awareness on the expected consequences of bystander help seeking in alcohol-related emergencies among student-athletes and non-athletes. Participants: 1,012 college students. Methods: Spearman's correlation and chi-square tests were used to examine accuracy in awareness of amnesty policies. Nominal logistic regression was used to test the relationship between amnesty policy awareness and expected consequences of bystander help seeking. Results: About 25% of students were unsure if their school had an amnesty policy; of these students, 67% attended schools with such a policy. Students who were unsure about the presence of amnesty policies were more likely to expect serious negative consequences of calling for help for both non-athlete peers (B = 1.152 p < 0.001) and student-athlete peers (B = 0.887 p = 0.001). Conclusions: Greater attention is needed to how amnesty policies are implemented on college campuses, including how they are communicated to and interpreted by student-athletes.

Tracking Changes in US Organizations' Workplace Health Promotion Initiatives: A Longitudinal Analysis of Performance Against Quality Benchmarks.

PURPOSE: To examine changes in organizations' workplace health promotion (WHP) initiatives over time associated with repeated self-assessment using the Well Workplace Checklist (WWC). DESIGN: Well Workplace Checklist data include a convenience sample of US organizations that selected to assess their performance against quality WHP benchmarks. SETTING: Workplaces. SUBJECTS: In total, 577 US organizations completed the WWC in 2 or more years from 2008 to 2015. MEASURES: The WWC is a 100-item organizational assessment that measures performance against the original set of quality benchmarks that were established by the Wellness Council of America (WELCOA). ANALYSIS: This study examined changes in overall WWC scores as well as 7 separate benchmark scores. Multilevel modeling was used to examine changes in scores associated with repeated assessments, controlling for the year of assessment and organizational characteristics. RESULTS: There were significant increases in overall WWC scores (ß = 2.93, P < .001) associated with the repeated WWC assessments, after controlling for organizational characteristics. All 7 benchmark scores had significant increases associated with reassessment. Compared to other benchmarks, operating plan (ß = 6.18, P < .001) and evaluation (ß = 4.91, P < .001) scores increased more with each reassessment. CONCLUSION: Continued reassessment may represent more commitment to and investment in WHP initiatives which could lead to improved quality. Other factors that may positively influence changes in performance against benchmarks include company size, access to outside resources for WHP, and a history with implementing WHP.

Association Between the Characteristics of Organizations and Their Profile of Performance Against Quality Benchmarks for Workplace Health Promotion.

OBJECTIVE: This study explored subgroups of performance profiles measured by organizations' Well Workplace Checklist (WWC) benchmark scores and examined company characteristics associated with performance subgroups. METHODS: The sample included 3728 US organizations that completed the WWC in 2008 to 2015. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to extract distinct subgroups of organizations based on benchmark performance. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to examine associations between the characteristics of organizations and their performance subgroup. RESULTS: Three distinct subgroups of performance resulted from the LPA. Significant associations were found between subgroup assignment and characteristics such as size, industry, how WHP initiatives were paid for, and reasons for implementing WHP initiatives. CONCLUSION: The characteristics associated with subgroups of performance suggest utility for developing specific interventions tailored to different types of organizations to improve their overall quality of WHP initiatives.

Performance Against WELCOA's Worksite Health Promotion Benchmarks Across Years Among Selected US Organizations.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to quantify the performance of organizations' worksite health promotion (WHP) activities against the benchmarking criteria included in the Well Workplace Checklist (WWC). DESIGN: The Wellness Council of America (WELCOA) developed a tool to assess WHP with its 100-item WWC, which represents WELCOA's 7 performance benchmarks. SETTING: Workplaces. PARTICIPANTS: This study includes a convenience sample of organizations who completed the checklist from 2008 to 2015. The sample size was 4643 entries from US organizations. MEASURES: The WWC includes demographic questions, general questions about WHP programs, and scales to measure the performance against the WELCOA 7 benchmarks. ANALYSIS: Descriptive analyses of WWC items were completed separately for each year of the study period. RESULTS: The majority of the organizations represented each year were multisite, multishift, medium- to large-sized companies mostly in the services industry. Despite yearly changes in participating organizations, results across the WELCOA 7 benchmark scores were consistent year to year. Across all years, benchmarks that organizations performed the lowest were senior-level support, data collection, and programming; wellness teams and supportive environments were the highest scoring benchmarks. CONCLUSION: In an era marked with economic swings and health-care reform, it appears that organizations are staying consistent in their performance across these benchmarks. The WWC could be useful for organizations, practitioners, and researchers in assessing the quality of WHP programs.