The ROI of Health and Well-Being: Business Investment in Healthier Communities

The World Economic Forum estimates a cumulative economic output loss of $47 trillion over the next two decades from noncommunicable diseases, like cancer, diabetes, and mental health. As businesses acknowledge the importance of health in the workplace, they are also beginning to recognize the relationship between their employees' health and the communities where their employees and customers live.

To better understand businesses’ growing relationship to community health, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Corporate Citizenship Center partnered with the Action Collaborative on Business Engagement in Building Healthy Communities (the Collaborative), a convening activity of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Population Health Improvement. This discussion paper is a product of that partnership, exploring the business motivation for investing in community health, the processes involved in that effort, and the challenges stakeholders faced when pursuing these initiatives.

Businesses are gaining a greater understanding of the effect that employee health, and the health of the communities in which businesses reside, has on their success. No matter the size, type, or location of a business, there is a business case for investing in community health and many of them are proactively looking to improve health in the communities where they operate.

Read this paper to explore the business motivations for investing in community health, challenges they face, and strategies many businesses are applying to create an impact.