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Wellness Works Conversations: Leading thinkers, practitioners and experts discuss the ideas that drive workplace wellness, health management, and healthy living.

You may not be aware, but one of the most prominent and important players in the workplace wellness space is the American Heart Association.

The reasons are simple. As the AHA itself says: “Despite spending more on healthcare than any other country in the world, America’s health lags behind other peer nations.” And as they add: “This isn’t just a medical and public health crisis, it is also an economic crisis.”

To help advance change, the American Heart Association has gotten active. They launched the AHA CEO Roundtable, more than 20 CEOs from some of America’s largest companies joining to help promote evidence-based approaches to workplace health. They created the Workplace Health Playbook, an outline of actionable advice to help employers and employees better understand what works in workplace health.

To learn more about the AHA efforts – the challenges of encouraging people to better focus on health in the workplace and the opportunities that can come from even small success – we spoke with Chris Calitz, Director of the AHA’s Center for Workplace Health Research and Evaluation.