Presentation Abstract

Title: The Role of Business and Industry in Improving Population Health and Well-Being

Achieving economic success is interlinked with value creation for society. Business and industry play an important role in generating economic success as well as in improving health and well-being of workers, their families, the community, and society at-large. Whereas major gaps remain in the evidence base connecting business to community health and well-being improvement, research indicates that multi-level and multi-component interventions are effective in improving health and well-being along with economic benefits, both in the workplace and community settings. From a stakeholder perspective, business is connected to public health in the community, health systems as purchasers of health insurance, and customers of care delivery services. As such, efforts to connect business with public health, health plans, and care delivery provides substantial opportunity to address the potential for multi-sectoral partnerships to improve health equity in preventive services. Business and public health leadership need to come together to build long-term, successful partnerships designed to generate social value along with business competitiveness. Principles intended to guide business in this direction that need to be supported by research in order to build confidence in results include: 1) shaping and promoting societal values, narratives, and language around health and to improving population health in ways that prioritize equity; 2) showing that a healthy society is a shared value; 3) embracing health as a strategic priority; 4) measuring and disclosing health impacts and contributions to a culture of health by business.

About Dr. Pronk

Nico Pronk is President of the HealthPartners Institute and Chief Science Officer at HealthPartners, Inc. and holds a faculty appointment as Adjunct Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

Dr. Pronk’s work is focused on connecting evidence of effectiveness with practical applications of programs and practices, policies, and systems that measurably improve population health and well-being. His work applies to the workplace, the care delivery setting, and the community and involves development of new models to improve health and well-being at the research, practice, and policy levels.

Dr. Pronk was confirmed by the White House to serve as Co-Chair of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for the year 2030 (also known as Healthy People 2030). He is a current member of the Food and Nutrition Board at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and is the founding and past President of the International Association for Worksite Health Promotion.

He is widely published in both the scientific and practice literatures, with more than 400 articles, books, and book chapters, and is an international speaker on population health and well-being. Dr. Pronk received his doctorate degree in exercise physiology at Texas A&M University and completed his postdoctoral studies in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Pronk did not disclose any conflicts of interest for this workshop.