In an unprecedented partnership for American health transformation, Gallup and Healthways are providing a new national daily pulse of individual and collective health and well-being, as well as solutions for a healthy America.
The projected cost of American healthcare by 2017 has been estimated at over $4 trillion. At least 50% of these costs will be due to preventable disease, including diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, and strokes. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index will be the largest collection of data related to the health and well-being of large populations ever assembled. This information will lead community leaders, policy makers, and employers to make decisions positively affecting the health and well-being of millions of people.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is designed to be the Dow Jones of health, giving a daily measure of people's well-being at the close of every day. With a daily measure, determining the correlation between the places where people work and the communities in which they live, and how it impacts their well-being, is now possible. Additionally, the index will increase an understanding of how those factors impact the financial health of corporations and communities.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a unique partnership in research and care, began in January 2008, and surveys 1,000 Americans every day. The research and methodology underlying the Well-Being Index is based on the World Health Organization definition of health as "not only the absence of infirmity and disease, but also a state of physical, mental, and social well-being."
