Should We Change How We Measure Participation and Engagement?

In 2015, HERO and the Population Health Alliance (PHA) published a comprehensive set of standards to guide the measurement and evaluation of employer-based well-being initiatives. One of the categories most often used to evaluate these initiatives is participation, which was given its own section in the HERO/PHA standards. Those standards for participation included a recommendation for more research on “the amount of intervention necessary to produce a positive health outcome” and studying participation “across channels/modalities” of programs. Interestingly, and perhaps intentionally, the HERO/PHA standards section on participation does not make any mention of “engagement.” However, the HERO Engagement Study Subcommittee has recently found that “participation” is often used synonymously with “engagement.” In this session, researchers will discuss a newly-published study that sought to fill a gap identified by the HERO/PHA standards and bridge the divide between “participation” and “engagement.” In this study, data from 95,000 individuals across 6 employers were analyzed to develop a participation index based on 9 separate well-being program components. Scores from this index were then analyzed to reveal that higher doses of well-being programming lead to more health risk improvement. After completing this session, participants will be able to: (1) Have a basic understanding of the participation metrics recommended in the HERO/PHA measurement standards, (2) Understand the methods used to create the participation index and how such indices could be used to assess engagement, and (3) Describe the potential advantages and disadvantages of such a participation index, including future research to improve upon the concept.