Business Role in Population Health Improvements

A recent discussion paper, being reviewed by the Institute of Medicine, concludes that there is an important case to be made for a much stronger role of business to improve the healthcare of the public. To date, the involvement of business in outcome-driven health care improvements has largely been focused on reducing health care costs and raising the productivity of its own workforce and their dependents. Corporate involvement in public healthcare improvement has often been in the form of dollars and in-kind services to support awareness for social good. But this paper, The Business Role in Improving Health: Beyond Social Responsibility, contends that an even more direct line can be drawn between a company’s core objectives and the health of the community.

The good news is that it isn’t hard to determine where companies should focus their efforts. The County Health Rankings* has identified and weighted factors, beyond merely health care quality and access, to assess what impacts public health outcomes. Based on importance, health behaviors (e.g., smoking, diet and exercise, alcohol use) are weighted at 30% and social factors such as education and income at 40% and therefore have the most influence on health outcomes. Health care itself is ranked at 20% and the physical environment at 10%.

Over the last few years there has indeed been growing corporate attention to wellness programs which focus on influencing the health behaviors of a company’s employees. In the short run this increases productivity, and in the long run it lowers health care costs. Broadening the picture with an environmental perspective to public health can impact the community and still provide the company a return on investment (ROI).

Ohio is fortunate. Cardinal Health and their Cardinal Health Foundation are definitely walking the talk and modeling for others as they facilitated and funded the development of a new resource for employers to curb the tide of prescription drug abuse. They know that by making an investment in the behavioral element of this epidemic there will be ROI for the company, the business community AND the community at large!

Five years ago, Cardinal Health Foundation began working with The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy on a journey that today impacts public health behavior around prescription misuse and abuse using awareness and education. Their GenerationRx initiative provides resources on the perils of medication abuse to a variety of target audiences, including elementary school students, high school students, college students and elderly people through school visits, educational resources and partnerships with student organizations on college campuses.

The campaign was originally launched as an academic endeavor to raise awareness about a rising trend in prescription drug abuse and misuse. Every year, based on lessons learned, the initiative has grown its available resources. Last year (2013), about half of all Academy of Student Pharmacists (ASP) chapters in the country participated in GenerationRx activities. And according to Dr. Ken Hale, dean for professional and external affairs at the College of Pharmacy, approximately 3.7 million people were reached by programs and activities related to GenerationRx.

Late in 2013, Cardinal Health Foundation set a goal to increase the capacity of the effort to stem this epidemic by targeting another audience – the workforce. They funded, in affiliation with OSU’s College of Pharmacy, the development of a GenerationRx workplace website by Working Partners®, an established leader in the area of drug-free workplace operations. Launching in 2014, this site, GenerationRxWorkplace.com will be chocked full of simple, free resources employers can use to improve their bottom lines and ignite an additional mass of people – their workforces – to be safer, more responsible consumers of prescription drugs.

The free library of resources on the site will have something for every employer. They can

• Download, print and distribute handouts, posters, wallet cards, etc. to raise awareness with employees and their families.
• Satisfy compliance requirements with The Dose of Reality, a 60-minute, state-of-the-art employee education course.
• Develop and strengthen their drug-free workplace programs with made-easy tools and assistance and much, much more.

Targeting employers, the website’s direct audience, specifically demonstrates an approach as recommended in The Business Role in Improving Health paper discussed above. On the site, Cardinal Health Foundation and their developers are able to illustrate for an employer an important causal relationship: if your workforce can become more responsible users of prescription drugs, then these improved health behaviors will improve the company’s bottom line (improved productivity and reduced healthcare costs). Once employers comprehend the value to their bottom line, they will have greater motivation to ignite their employees to be aware, get educated about, and take action to become safer, critical consumers of prescription medications.

Through a four-minute, engaging video, visitors to the GenerationRxWorkplace site will learn that 19% of Workers’ Compensation medical costs are for prescription drugs; that prescription drug abuse costs employers $42 billion a year in lost productivity; that 1 in 5 people misuse or abuse prescription drugs; and that, when added all together, it is in the employer’s best financial interest to take the free tools provided on the site and help their employees become more responsible consumers of prescription drugs.

As Michael Porter observes in The Business Role in Improving Health paper, the solution to healthcare improvement, “… lies in the principle of shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.” (Porter and Kramer, 2011) The paper restates something what we already know, corporate responsibility plays an important motivational role in health improvement. However it goes on to conclude, we can gain more traction if improving health can be linked to corporate bottom-line performance and business takes even more involvement in the process. The links are there to be made. Prescription drug abuse costs businesses.

May more corporations follow Cardinal Health Foundation’s lead in making that connection and join in the fight with fervor.

Be sure to watch for announcements about the launch of this valuable new resource.

* County Health Rankings, 2012 is a collaboration of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin

Return to Home Page

(DON’T FORGET: Click on the boxes to the right for our columns)