Address Social Determinants of Health
You can have a positive influence on the social determinants of health (SDOH) that affect your workforce. You can prioritize creating conditions that support employee well-being by understanding the factors that affect their health outcomes.
One way to do this is to align your offering of the National DPP lifestyle change program with your organization’s overall culture of health and make the program accessible to all employees.
This section describes specific strategies and actions you can take to address SDOH in your workplace, focusing on how SDOH affect participants in the National DPP lifestyle change program. You may already be using some of these strategies, while some you may just be starting to implement. You may not have considered others. Regardless, each of these strategies and actions can help you effectively address SDOH and support the employees participating in your program.
You should also consider the following factors as you explore ways to address SDOH:
- Leadership Engagement Your organization’s executives and managers should lead by example. One of the best ways to encourage employees who need support is for their leaders to participate in programs and actively focus on their own wellness.
- Partner Coordination You can ask your program’s Lifestyle Coach to work with your State Health Department to identify local resources that can help support program participants.
- Health Policies Stay informed about state and local policy changes that may affect employee and community health. Support those that align with your health promotion efforts.
- Participant Engagement Remember that the strategies you adopt to address SDOH are only as good as your ability to engage those who need this support the most.
Consider the Built Environment
The “built environment” refers to human-made surroundings that influence overall community health and provide the setting for daily activity. It includes factors like safe and affordable housing, accessible transportation, and workspace design.
The following actions can help you create supportive environments that reinforce employee health and help you address the built environment aspect of SDOH:
Lifestyle Coaches focus on helping participants in the National DPP lifestyle change program get 150 minutes of physical activity each week. With the right environmental supports in place, participants can more easily achieve this goal.
Find ways to make it easy for employees to add extra activity into their day. Examples include signs that encourage the use of stairs instead of elevators and the creation of walking trails near worksites. Incentives that promote extra physical activity can be meaningful to all employees.
Make sure your employees can get to and from National DPP lifestyle change program sessions. Consider some of the following for support:
- Bike racks
- Showers and lockers
- Sidewalks
You can also consider offering transportation subsidies for mass transit or Lyft, Uber, or other ride-sharing services. These subsidies could be used to help employees get to in-person sessions or related medical appointments.
Foster Community-Clinical Linkages
“Community-clinical linkages” are connections made between health care, public health, and community organizations to improve population health. Your employees are more likely to participate in the National DPP lifestyle change program if they are referred by a healthcare provider. For this reason, you should foster collaborations with local providers and organizations. Strengthen your program recruiting efforts by working with community partners who can support and reinforce your message.
The following actions can help you use community-clinical linkages to address SDOH:
Consider working with online platforms such as Unite Us and Find Help that connect people to community services and organizations. Your employee health plan may already cover some of these benefits, or you can contract directly with providers.
You can also refer program participants to community organizations for additional support as they navigate their lifestyle changes. Examples include food pantries, counseling centers, social service agencies, and local chapters for national advocacy organizations, such as the American Heart Association.
Partner with local clinics and community organizations to host screening events. You can also work with them to add A1C testing to workplace or community health fairs and screenings.
Work with your partners to add SDOH measures to health risk assessments to assess unmet social needs. Review the data and other information you gather from these screenings to better understand your workforce and how you can further address SDOH. Make sure employees are aware of and access the existing services your organization is offering to remove indicated barriers to a healthy lifestyle (such as transportation and healthy food vouchers).
Work with a third-party administrator to create a network of health care providers who can refer your employees to your National DPP lifestyle change program. You can also look for existing networks that are committed to delivering high-quality care at lower costs. Existing referral networks may include insurers, third-party administrators, or healthcare provider organizations. Reach out to these networks and ask them to support referral pathways to help your employees participate in health promotion and disease prevention programs, including the National DPP lifestyle change program.
Your Healm Guide can connect you with your state health department to help you identify and navigate existing referral networks.
Reach out to your point of contact in your State Health Department for information on existing programs and resources that address SDOH and could help your workforce. If you don’t have a point of contact, reach out to your Healm Guide by submitting a Healm Support Ticket.
Promote Food and Nutrition Security
“Food and nutrition security” refers to having reliable access to high-quality food to avoid hunger and stay healthy. Consistent and equitable access to healthy, affordable food is foundational for employee well-being. Adequate nutrition fosters physical health, mental well-being, and productivity.
Nutrition and healthy eating is a priority focus of the National DPP lifestyle change program. Remember that not all program participants have equal access to nutritious and affordable food choices.
The following actions can help you promote food and nutrition security to address SDOH:
You can ensure that your employees have access to healthy and nutritious food in several ways. For example, you can:
- Provide free, low-cost, or subsidized healthy food options, including snacks and lunches, for employees.
- Work with vending machine partners to ensure that healthy options are affordable and accessible.
- Implement food labeling practices and “healthy choice” campaigns.
- Consider adding a food bank at your worksite. Brand the food bank in an approachable and nonstigmatizing way.
- Plan healthy and affordable options for each onsite meal.
- Explore other ways to increase employee access to healthy food options.
Implement wellness benefits and Employee Assistance Program offerings that reinforce the goals of your National DPP lifestyle change program and make sense for your workforce. For example, you can:
- Provide nutrition counseling from by a registered dietician to employees with prediabetes or diabetes.
- Offer free or discounted meal delivery subscriptions.
- Provide on-site opportunities to buy healthy foods to help employees who have transportation barriers that limit their access to healthy foods.
Consider partnering with farmers’ markets or community-supported agriculture programs to offer on-site programs. Offer employees time within their workday to participate in these activities.
A “food desert” is an area of a community that has limited access to affordable, nutritious food. Alternatively, a “food swamp” describes an area where fast food and unhealthy options are more prevalent than healthier alternatives.
Assess your employee population’s home locations for food deserts or food swamps. You can use resources from the U.S. Department of Agriculture or request data from your state health department. Build community partnerships to work on solutions to address these disparities.
Encourage Social Connectedness
“Social connectedness” refers to people or groups engaging in relationships that support a sense of belonging, care, and value. Cultivating a culture of wellness through social connections can enhance employee morale and contribute to a more inclusive, equitable work environment.
The year-long National DPP lifestyle change program provides support from a Lifestyle Coach. It also fosters support among program participants and provides opportunities for social connectedness, both in-person and virtually. Employees can forge new connections and create a sense of community that might not occur naturally in their work environment. These bonds often last long beyond the program period.
Offering your program in person—either on-site or off-site—can promote social connectedness. The following actions can also help you promote social connectedness in the workplace to address SDOH:
Advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace by holding roundtable discussions on unconscious bias, workplace discrimination, and cultural competency.
Consider creating employee resource groups. These groups will give employees who have things in common an open forum to meet and support one another to enhance community-building and sense of belonging.
Examine your existing wellness benefits and your Employee Assistance Program to find ways to enhance social connectedness. Examples include gym memberships, mindfulness groups, and life-skills training.
Consider promoting other creative social activities to your employees, such as book clubs, walking groups, and community volunteer campaigns.
Work with the organization that delivers your National DPP lifestyle change program to find ways to encourage engagement between participants beyond the program sessions. Examples include walking buddies, accountability partners, or even potluck meal events.
Use apps and social media platforms to help connect participants outside of program sessions. Reinforce and support community-building by actively engaging participants through social media messaging.
Implement Tobacco-Free Policies
“Tobacco-free policies” are population-based preventive measures to reduce tobacco use and tobacco-related illness and death. Unequal access to smokefree and vape-free laws can perpetuate health disparities, making comprehensive policies essential for addressing tobacco use equitably.
Employers have historically led the way in adopting tobacco-free policies in the workplace and developing health and wellness programs that address tobacco use.
The following actions can help you promote tobacco-free policies to address SDOH:
Review your employee benefits for tobacco cessation. Consider implementing full coverage for brief or intensive tobacco cessation counseling and medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Consider reimbursing employees for out-of-pocket costs related to tobacco cessation or nicotine replacement therapies.
Tobacco cessation is specifically listed in the National DPP lifestyle change program curriculum as a way to keep your heart healthy. Lifestyle Coaches can provide support to participants or refer them to proven programs, such as smoking quitlines.
Reduce or eliminate places where employees experience secondhand exposure to nicotine. Implement workplace policies that limit or prohibit smoking and vaping. Consider adopting the Society for Human Resource Management’s Smoke and Vape-Free Workplace Policy.
Promote good health through a variety of methods, including communications, policy implementation, benefits coverage, classes, quitline referrals, and access to counseling. Implementing a multipronged approach is more successful in reducing workplace tobacco use than focusing on a single program.