Workable Health
Institute for the Future (IFTF) with support from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), convened a group of work and health leaders to evaluate how present-day forces shaping work will influence health equity, both positively and negatively, over the next decade. During the two-day convening, which took place on August 21st and 22nd in Palo Alto, California, IFTF guided a diverse group of experts in creating positive scenarios for work and health equity. This report aims to jump-start targeted investigations on the future of work’s impacts on health that lead to actions that contribute positively to health equity. Download the full report on the convening here.
Changes in demographics, technology, and labor policies are combining to create an exciting, risky, and complex future for work and workers. Given the magnitude of these changes, and their powerful combinatorial effects, it’s not surprising that the topic of the future of work has dominated conferences, convenings, and regional planning sessions over the last few years. From large businesses interested in maintaining a steady pipeline for talent, to educational institutions tasked with equipping today’s learners with skills they will need for future jobs, to policymakers concerned about how these changes will impact the employer-employee social compact, a broad range of stakeholders is preparing for a vastly different future of work in the United States.
Because work is a core aspect of human life, substantial changes in work conditions and arrangements will result in large-scale societal effects. Conversations about the future of work routinely include the impacts on education, workforce preparation, health insurance, and safety-net protections. But if the impact of the forces shaping the future of work is as transformative as anticipated by business, academic, and policy leaders, then these conversations must include the broader consequences that the changing nature of work will have on the broader topic of health in American society. Conversations about the future of health need to take into account the forces shaping work, and conversations examining the future of work need to factor in the potential impacts these forces will have on health.
It’s hard to imagine a work environment conducive to shared economic prosperity that doesn’t also promote good health and well-being for workers and their families. The strong connection between work and health outcomes is well established, which is why it is imperative that we adequately prepare for the impacts of the changing nature of work.
Download the full report here.
Support for this report was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.
For more than 45 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has worked to improve health and health care. We are working alongside others to build a national Culture of Health that provides everyone in America a fair and just opportunity for health and well-being. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter at www.rwjf.org/twitter or on Facebook at www.rwjf.org/ facebook.
IFTF’s Equitable Futures Lab works to understand the complexity of this dynamic by looking at it through the prism of history, the present and the future. The combination of new technologies and changing work arrangements threatens to make the economic divide even wider. The Equitable Futures Lab combines expertise in social science, quantitative research, policy analysis, and public engagement with proven foresight methodologies to develop and prototype innovative solutions for an equitable future.
Institute for the Future (IFTF) has decades of research on the future of work and the future of health. Currently, IFTF is exploring the intersection of the changing nature of work and how it impacts individual and community health. Through the lens of technology and policy, this report, “Workable Health: Achieving Health Equity Amid Changing Work Dynamics,” continues IFTF's research into how community well-being is impacted by the current unprecedented economic inequality, persistent racial disadvantage, a disintegrating social safety net, and deteriorating job quality.