M ost employers understand the importance of measuring and evaluating their health and well-being initiatives. Benefits of an effective evaluation strategy include informing ongoing program improvements and sustaining support from senior decision makers and program funders, 1 but RAND researchers report that only about half of employers who offer wellness programs evaluate them. 2 Moreover, only 50% of employers report their data management and evaluation activities are effective and the most commonly used program evaluation metrics focus on participation rates, physical health risk data, and healthcare utilization/cost data. 3 While such metrics are important, they do not represent the full value of investing in employee well-being. 4 For employers who have a strong evaluation strategy and are regularly collecting data on numerous outcomes, their biggest challenge is often presenting the results in a meaningful way to key stakeholders. 5 Previous issues of The Art of Health Promotion have addressed the need to establish strong program evaluation practices and identified resources to support a comprehensive approach to measurement. 6-8 This issue focuses on how to bring multiple metrics together in a meaningful way to convey a story about the impact and value of the health and well-being initiative to various stakeholders. The first article in the issue provides guidance from a Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO) workgroup with recommendations on the development of a Value Demonstration Dashboard for business leaders. This guidance is followed by articles from several employers about the process they used to develop dashboards for various stakeholder groups within their organizations. Kristi Rahrig Jenkins from the University of Michigan shares the process her team used to develop a dashboard that visually summarizes the progress MHealthy is contributing toward established health and well-being goals. Joan Troester and Megan Hammes also describe their dashboard development journey but focus on meeting the needs of University of Iowa Human Resources leaders. It's instructive to note how the metrics featured in the 2 university's dashboards differ based on the unique needs of their stakeholder groups. Sandia National Laboratories provides a third case study that features a more interactive dashboard that allows their Preventive Health team to create division level scorecards to inform ongoing program improvements and enhancements. A final article by Nicolaas Pronk and Matthew Stiefel broadens the discussion by identifying readily available community-level measures that could be incorporated into workplace health and well-being dashboards to align community and workforce well-being efforts. This is particularly important for tracking how corporate organizations can contribute to broader national health goals, such as those that will be represented in the Healthy People 2030 initiative.
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