World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum is an organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Every year, the world’s most influential companies partner with the World Economic Forum in initiatives to tackle the most complex challenges facing humanity.

To learn more about the WEF, please click onto WHF partnerships/WEF page.  

During WEF meetings, the following facts were discussed:

• Large, multinational companies have significant exposure to reduced productivity and increased costs associated with the burden of chronic disease.
• Many chronic diseases are imminently preventable by diminishing the associated risk factors of poor diet, smoking and lack of physical activity.
• The workplace provides an important location for driving the long-term changes in behaviour required, bringing benefits to employer, employee and community.
• Public-private partnerships are key to managing this societal crisis effectively.

Given these realities, partners of the World Economic Forum chose to shape an initiative, called Working Towards Wellness, with three main goals: to engage CEOs and business leaders to commit to measurably improve employee health and wellness, to help companies take practical steps to improve general employee health and to facilitate collaboration between stakeholders in battle against chronic disease.  

As an advocate of the fight against chronic and cardiovascular disease, and a regular speaker at the WEF meetings, the World Heart Federation has been selected as one of the key partners to develop this initiative. The organization joined the Steering Committee in order to stimulate greater business engagement in the fight against cardiovascular and other chronic diseases. The initiative seeks to bring together employers, health professionals and policy-makers to control the risk factors that increase employees’ vulnerability to the chronic diseases.

The World Heart Federation emphasized companies’ need to extend their commitment to worker wellness beyond their headquarters to include factory workers in low- and middle-income countries. It began working with a pharmaceutical manufacturer to develop a creative public-private partnership pilot project to identify feasible and affordable strategies for reducing chronic disease among its employees at two factories in India.

To learn more about the Working Towards Wellness Initiative, please click on the following link: http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/Wellness/index.htm
To learn more about the involvement of the World Heart Federation in this initiative, please read the following press release:
http://www.worldheart.org/press-releases-wcc06-workplace-wellness.php