Abstract P005: Improving Heart Health in the Workplace: Results From the First Year of the American Heart Association’s Workplace Health Achievement Index

Abstract

Background: Comprehensive workplace wellness programs (CWWPs) have the potential to improve the heart health of the US workforce. To accelerate the adoption of these programs, the American Heart Association launched the Workplace Health Achievement Index (WHAI). The WHAI is an online scorecard that evaluates a workplace’s culture of health and the aggregate heart health score of its workforce as measured by Life’s Simple 7. Evidence from other workplace scorecards indicate that smaller companies achieve lower scores. Objective: To quantify differences in WHAI scores and score components between smaller (<250 employees) and larger (250+ employees) worksites. Methods: The total WHAI score is derived from 55 structure and process measures across seven best-practice domains and performance metrics based on employee Life’s Simple 7 data. Data from the first WHAI cycle (Feb 1 - June 30, 2016) were analyzed from 239 worksites that provided structure and process information. All data were stratified according to company size (smaller vs. larger). Differences in practice and performance measures were assessed across groups using Pearson chi-square tests or paired t-tests. Results: Overall, 5% of workplaces submitted the required amount of heart health metrics data (≥25% of employees) for eligibility. Smaller companies achieved a lower total WHAI score and lower scores across all domains except for Partnerships (Table 1). Conclusion: Lower WHAI scores for smaller companies may be due to limited resources and capacity to implement CWWPs. Low submission of performance metrics highlights the challenge of including these data in a comprehensive assessment of CWWPs. To meet its 2020 Goals, AHA should consider providing smaller companies with resources to implement CWWPs and develop strategies to increase submission of employee Life’s Simple 7 data. Table 1: Differences in mean AHA Index scores between small and large companies *Sample sizes too small for meaningful comparison.