Dallas-Fort Worth Employers Launch Health Initiative

According to a press release, part of a national effort known regionally as the Texas Health Strategy Project, the program will help area employers implement a value-based approach to benefits design to ensure that their workforce has access to high quality, evidence-based and cost-effective health care by reducing barriers (such as waiving co-pays) to essential services. Participating employers will take part in a structured, guided data-driven process to analyze, design, implement and evaluate value-based benefits design features to motivate their employees to make wise life style and health care decisions.  

This Texas Health Strategy Project uses a data model to help employers identify programs that offer high value, promote employee wellness and prevention, manage long-term health care costs, and improve the health of employees and their families through benefit design strategies and health improvement programs.  

“The Texas Health Strategy Project will focus on the role that employers play in influencing employees to choose healthy lifestyles and to demand high quality health care. These efforts are just two of our ongoing initiatives to encourage local healthcare stakeholders to work collaboratively to improve chronic care in the DFW area,” said Marianne Fazen, DFWBGH executive director, in the announcement.  

The Texas Health Strategy Project is part of the national American Health Strategy Project, launched by the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH) in cooperation with Pfizer Inc. The project will provide both hands-on technical and financial support to assist the DFWBGH and its employer members in developing a complementary array of employee health offerings and incentives that better align health promotion and prevention strategies with medical and pharmaceutical plans, and other benefits such as disability, and workers’ compensation.