Healthy Babies, Healthy Business: A Worksite Health Education Program

Background: Approximately one-half of births in United States occur to women in the workforce. In 2006, there were over 500,000 babies born prematurely, before 37 completed weeks of gestation. Prematurity is a major factor in neonatal death and infant illness such as cerebral palsy. The infant cost to employers for a preterm birth alone is approximately $41,610 vs. $2,830 for an uncomplicated full term birth. There are 14 risk factors such as hazardous substances, environmental stress, and smoking that if modified by women before or early in pregnancy, could improve outcomes.

Solution/Tool: The March of Dimes has created Healthy Babies, Healthy Business, a FREE health education program for employers. The program is comprised of six components (an intranet-based preconception/prenatal content for employees; English and Spanish language Web content; email access to health information specialists; bilingual printed materials; support for parents of preemies; and bereavement support). The information in the program, such as exposure to hazardous substances, can help employees make better decisions about their health and health care. By encouraging women to use these resources, employers can also promote their own resources such as smoking cessation to address these risk factors and reduce their overall health care costs. This would encourage employees to avoid risky behaviors and thus reduce their overall health care costs as well as those associated with premature births or any negative pregnancy outcome.

Results: To date (2/08), the program has been placed over 60 companies. Additional results and evaluation will be presented at the meeting.