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Objective: Health and well-being (HWB) are material to sustainable business performance. Yet, corporate reporting largely lacks the intentional inclusion of HWB metrics. This brief report presents an argument for inclusion of HWB metrics into existing standards for corporate reporting., Methods and Results: A Core Scorecard and a Comprehensive Scorecard, designed by a team of subject matter experts, based on available evidence of effectiveness, and organized around the categories of Governance, Management, and Evidence of Success, may be integrated into corporate reporting efforts., Conclusions: Pursuit of corporate integrated reporting requires corporate governance and ethical leadership and values that ultimately align with environmental, social, and economic performance. Agreement on metrics that intentionally include HWB may allow for integrated reporting that has the potential to yield significant value for business and society alike.

Objective: Efforts to realize the potential of disease prevention in the United States have fallen behind those of peer countries, and workplace disease prevention is a major gap. This article investigates the reasons for this gap., Methods: Literature review and expert discussions., Results: Obstacles to effective use of workplace disease prevention include limited leadership and advocacy, poor alignment of financial incentives, limitations in research quality and investment, regulation that does not support evidence-based practice, and a dearth of community-employer partnerships., Conclusions: We make recommendations to address these obstacles, such as the inclusion of health metrics in corporate reporting, making the workplace a central component of the strategy to combat the effect of noncommunicable diseases, and linking prevention directly benefit businesses' bottom lines.

Objective: To respond to the question, "Do workplace health promotion programs work?", Methods: A compilation of the evidence on workplace programs' effectiveness coupled with recommendations for critical review of outcome studies. Also, reviewed are recent studies questioning the value of workplace programs., Results: Evidence accumulated over the past three decades shows that well-designed and well-executed programs that are founded on evidence-based principles can achieve positive health and financial outcomes., Conclusions: Employers seeking a program that "works" are urged to consider their goals and whether they have an organizational culture that can facilitate success. Employers who choose to adopt a health promotion program should use best and promising practices to maximize the likelihood of achieving positive results.

Non-communicable chronic diseases related to behaviors such as tobacco use, overeating, excess alcohol intake and physical inactivity account for increasing morbidity and mortality in South Africa. Over the last 15 years, Discovery Health, the largest private health plan in South Africa, has developed a voluntary health promotion program called Vitality with over 1.5 million members. Vitality was designed with many applications drawn from the growing field of behavioral economics, including the use of incentives and rewards. Incentives offered on the program are aimed at lowering the financial barriers to activities such as visiting the gym, buying healthy food or receiving preventive screening. Members accrue points for engagement which translate into discounts on a range of goods and services. Although the full impact of the program cannot yet be quantified, engagement with the program is continually increasing and there is compelling evidence that this translates into better health and cost outcomes., (© 2013.)

Background: The South African (SA) government has implemented comprehensive tobacco control measures in line with the requirements of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The effect of these measures on smoking prevalence and smoking-related attitudes, particularly among young people, is largely unknown., Objective: To describe the impact of a comprehensive health promotion approach to tobacco control amongst SA school learners., Methods: Four successive cross-sectional Global Youth Tobacco Surveys (GYTSs) were conducted in 1999, 2002, 2008 and 2011 among nationally representative samples of SA grades 8 - 10 school learners. We assessed the prevalence of current smoking (having smoked a cigarette on ≥1 day in the 30 days preceding the survey) and smoking-related attitudes and behaviours., Results: Over the 12-year survey period current smoking among learners declined from 23.0% (1999) to 16.9% (2011) - a 26.5% reduction. Reductions in smoking prevalence were less pronounced amongst girls and amongst black learners. We observed an increase in smoking prevalence amongst learners between 2008 and 2011. Smoking-related attitudes and behaviours showed favourable changes over the survey period., Conclusion: These surveys demonstrate that the comprehensive and inter-sectorial tobacco control health promotion strategies implemented in SA have led to a gradual reduction in cigarette use amongst school learners. Of concern, however, are the smaller reductions in smoking prevalence amongst girls and black learners and an increase in smoking prevalence from 2008 to 2011. Additional efforts, especially for girls, are needed to ensure continued reduction in smoking prevalence amongst SA youth.

The World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization, arguably the most powerful business and health organizations in the world, are collaborating on an effort to make workplace wellness a global priority. The authors discuss progress on this effort.

There is evidence that widening income gaps are a global phenomenon; that in many advanced industrialised countries unemployment rates are rising; that globalisation of the world economy has led to several countries becoming marginalised with a concomitant increase in poverty; and that the absolute number of poor has steadily increased over the last decade. All of these phenomena emphasise the need to focus on equity as a global concern.

Growth monitoring, oral rehydration, breast-feeding and immunisation--female education, family spacing and food supplementation (GOBI-FFF) are a selective package of World Health Organisation primary health care strategies recommended by UNICEF. Changes over a 1-year period in the implementation of the components of GOBI-FFF were investigated in a rural village in Ciskei to detect any changes associated with a newly modified village health-worker (VHW) programme. A baseline survey was conducted before the introduction of a modified VHW programme and a second survey took place a year later. The principles of GOBI-FFF were already familiar to and have since been increasingly practised by the community and health personnel. Breast-feeding is widespread, most carers know how to make oral rehydration solution and most children have a 'Road to Health' card and are being weighed regularly. However, malnutrition remains a major problem and the food supplementation programme is operating poorly. The high coverage of the community by the village health-workers and the clinic suggest that these two channels should be used more intensively to strengthen the GOBI-FFF programme in the area.