The American workforce is changing, creating new challenges for employers to provide occupational health services to meet the needs of employees. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) workforce is highly skilled and competitive and employees frequently work under intense pressure to ensure mission success. The Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer at NASA requested that the Institute of Medicine review its occupational health programs, assess employee awareness of and attitude toward those programs, recommend options for future worksite preventive health programs, and ways to evaluate their effectiveness. The committee's findings show that although NASA has a history of being forward-looking in designing and improving health and wellness programs, there is a need to move from a traditional occupational health model to an integrated, employee-centered program that could serve as a national model for both public and private employers to emulate and improve the health and performance of their workforces.

"If the Department of Defense (DoD) moves toward a more integrated employee health system, a foundation of information about the current system and requisite elements for such integration will be needed. The authors reviewed the research literature and DoD policy documents and interviewed DoD personnel to make several observations about the current state of safety and occupational health (SOH) arrangements in DoD. Currently, SOH policy cuts across several organizations at high levels in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and SOH programs are implemented by each of the military services. Recently, leadership attention has focused on safety, mostly apart from occupational health, as a separate priority. DoD and the services have made efforts to increase coordination, including both high-level formal councils and through informal relationships among SOH practitioners. Health promotion and wellness have received considerable attention within DoD through periodic health assessments and educational programs, yet these areas have not benefited from the same increased coordination. As DoD contemplates a more integrated approach, the authors considered what DoD might learn from civilian experience with integrating employee health activities. To address this, the authors reviewed civilian models of integration to identify promising approaches and practices that might inform DoD efforts. The review of activities related to employee health in DoD -- including industrial hygiene, safety, health promotion and wellness, occupational health, and its relatively mature health information technology infrastructure -- indicates that there might be little need for DoD to introduce new programs but more need to make use of the information generated by the existing programs in a more coordinated, integrated manner." -- provided by publisher.

Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care: Moving Upstream to Improve the Nation's Health was released in September 2019, before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020. Improving social conditions remains critical to improving health outcomes, and integrating social care into health care delivery is more relevant than ever in the context of the pandemic and increased strains placed on the U.S. health care system. The report and its related products ultimately aim to help improve health and health equity, during COVID-19 and beyond. The consistent and compelling evidence on how social determinants shape health has led to a growing recognition throughout the health care sector that improving health and health equity is likely to depend â€" at least in part â€" on mitigating adverse social determinants. This recognition has been bolstered by a shift in the health care sector towards value-based payment, which incentivizes improved health outcomes for persons and populations rather than service delivery alone. The combined result of these changes has been a growing emphasis on health care systems addressing patients' social risk factors and social needs with the aim of improving health outcomes. This may involve health care systems linking individual patients with government and community social services, but important questions need to be answered about when and how health care systems should integrate social care into their practices and what kinds of infrastructure are required to facilitate such activities. Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care: Moving Upstream to Improve the Nation's Health examines the potential for integrating services addressing social needs and the social determinants of health into the delivery of health care to achieve better health outcomes. This report assesses approaches to social care integration currently being taken by health care providers and systems, and new or emerging approaches and opportunities; current roles in such integration by different disciplines and organizations, and new or emerging roles and types of providers; and current and emerging efforts to design health care systems to improve the nation's health and reduce health inequities.

øCorporate Wellness Programs offers contributions from international experts, examining the planning, implementation and evaluation of wellness initiatives in organizations, and offering guidance on how to introduce these programs in to the workplace.

In our complex, fast changing society, health is strongly influenced by the continuously changing interactions between organisations and their employees. Three major fields contribute to health-oriented improvements of these interactions: occupational health, organizational health and public health. As currently only partial links exist amongst these fields, the book aims to explore potential synergies more systematically. Considering the high mental and social demands in a service and knowledge sector economy, the first part of the book focuses on work-related psychosocial factors. As a large proportion of inequalities in health in developed countries can be explained by inequalities in working conditions, those psychosocial factors with a particularly high public health impact are highlighted. As addressing these psychosocial factors requires to involve the organization as the key change agent, the second part covers approaches to improve public health through organizational level health interventions. The last section takes a look into the future of occupational, organizational and public health: what are the future challenges regarding occupational health and how can they be tackled within and beyond the organizational level. Overall, this integrating book will help to broaden the evidence-base, legitimacy and efficacy of occupational- and organizational-level health interventions and thus increase their public health impact.

A smarter framework for designing more effective workplace wellness programs Workplace Wellness That Works provides a fresh perspective on how to promote employee well-being in the workplace. In addressing the interconnectivity between wellness and organizational culture, this book shows you how to integrate wellness into your existing employee development strategy in more creative, humane, and effective ways. Based on the latest research and backed by real-world examples and case studies, this guide provides employers with the tools they need to start making a difference in their employees' health and happiness, and promoting an overall culture of well-being throughout the organization. You'll find concrete, actionable advice for tackling the massive obstacle of behavioral change, and learn how to design and implement an approach that can most benefit your organization. Promoting wellness is a good idea. Giving employees the inspiration and tools they need to make changes in their lifestyles is a great idea. But the billion-dollar question is: what do they want, what do they need, and how do we implement programs to help them without causing more harm than good? Workplace Wellness That Works shows you how to assess your organization's needs and craft a plan that actually benefits employees. Build an effective platform for well-being Empower employees to make better choices Design and deliver the strategy that your organization needs Drive quantifiable change through more creative implementation Today's worksite wellness industry represents a miasma of competing trends, making it nearly impossible to come away with tangible solutions for real-world implementation. Harnessing a broader learning and development framework, Workplace Wellness That Works skips the fads and shows you how to design a smarter strategy that truly makes a difference in employees' lives—and your company's bottom line.

Building on the revolutionary Institute of Medicine reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Keeping Patients Safe lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses' working conditions and demands. Licensed nurses and unlicensed nursing assistants are critical participants in our national effort to protect patients from health care errors. The nature of the activities nurses typically perform â€" monitoring patients, educating home caretakers, performing treatments, and rescuing patients who are in crisis â€" provides an indispensable resource in detecting and remedying error-producing defects in the U.S. health care system. During the past two decades, substantial changes have been made in the organization and delivery of health care â€" and consequently in the job description and work environment of nurses. As patients are increasingly cared for as outpatients, nurses in hospitals and nursing homes deal with greater severity of illness. Problems in management practices, employee deployment, work and workspace design, and the basic safety culture of health care organizations place patients at further risk. This newest edition in the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Quality Chasm series discusses the key aspects of the work environment for nurses and reviews the potential improvements in working conditions that are likely to have an impact on patient safety.