Employer Engagement Strategies to Promote and Add Evidence-Based Chronic Disease Prevention and Management Programs as a Covered Benefit

Chronic disease is a serious workforce issue with significant economic impacts on employers and employees. While there are several evidence-based chronic disease prevention and management programs (CDPMPs), they are underutilized in the workplace due to a lack of awareness and understanding by employers. There are few studies to inform how best to engage employers to help support at-risk employees and provide coverage of evidence-based programs. This paper aims to present the gaps and opportunities in how these programs are implemented and promoted by employers to increase the awareness and adoption of evidence-based CDPMPs, specifically the National Diabetes Prevention Program (National DPP) as a covered benefit among employers. We provide detailed information on three organizational engagement strategies used for 349 organizations and provide data on levels of employer and employee engagement for the three organizations that completed uptake. Our paper reflects on the findings of the tested engagement strategies to provide guidance for employer engagement in CDPMPs. These cases show the importance of employer engagement to support and maintain chronic disease prevention and management efforts and key strategies for organizational implementation of evidence-based programs.