Integration of Medical Care and Worksite Health Promotion

THIS ARTICLE examines the role of worksite health promotion in the context of the changing American workplace and the rapidly evolving US health care system. Societal changes are altering the structure, incentives for, and locations of work, as well as the organization and provision of health care services. These changes—including trends toward corporate downsizing and parttime employment, desktop computing and telecommuting, and increasing employer health costs1—provide opportunities to rethink the role of health promotion in the workplace and to better integrate medical care and preventive services for employees and their dependents. For many years, medical and health promotion perspectives developed along parallel but separate tracks, owing to the different emphases they placed on curative and preventive strategies and the tensions between these alternative, yet complementary, approaches to health care.2-4 Recently, the need to reduce rapidly escalating health costs, the shift toward outpatient services and managed care.