Developing workplace health promotion programs through university and corporate collaboration. A review of the Corporate Health Promotion Research Program.
The unique collaboration of the UCSF School of Medicine with community and national leaders in corporate health promotion has, in less than three years, made the Corporate Health Promotion Research Program a valuable resource to participating corporations. We are able to offer them sound consultation on health promotion programs, based on state-of-the-art research, at minimal cost to the employer or employees. In addition, we are educating employers about quality programs and the process and need for evaluation, in an effort to generate sound findings on the effects of corporate health promotion programs. Corporations are beginning to see that instead of being reactive and spending great sums of money only after employees become ill, it makes good sense to institute programs designed to prevent employees from becoming ill in the first place. With such programs, corporations not only improve the health of their employees (a worthy objective in its own right), but they contribute to containing medical costs at the same time--a clear "win-win" situation for all concerned. In short, corporations are finding that an ongoing, active interest in the health of their employees has a direct bearing on their own long-range health as a business. With this in mind, we feel that medical benefit plans of the future will be comprised of three elements: medical care plus cost-containment plus health promotion programs. With this order of complexity, no one company or professional organization has all the answers--and that should be acknowledged from the outset.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)