As many of you know, I am on the advisory board of the Care Innovations Validation Institute.  This is an important organization for the Population Health and Wellness industry. The advisory board is chaired by Dr. David Nash, Dean of the Jefferson College of Population Health.
Our industry is facing some questions; one need only look at the multitude of population health and wellness vendors and their reports of amazing outcomes to know that something is not right.  RAND has published some very good studies (here, here and here)  that showed limited to negative returns from various wellness and employe health improvement programs and Al Lewis has published many examples in his books (here and here)  and on his website.  While on the other side, Ron Goetzel at the Institute for Health and Productivity Studies within Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,  has a whole section devoted to programs that do work.
Last year the Population Health Alliance held a debate between Ron and Al. The event was standing room only and came to the conclusion that many of the programs do not work, while a few very well designed and implemented programs do.

So where can companies looking for quality programs go to find vendors measuring and reporting their results correctly? And what can a vendor doing good work do to stand out from the crowd? Or perhaps what can a vendor who would like to up their game or those launching a new product do to make sure they are measuring their results correctly? My recommendation would be to get your work validated at the Validation Institute.
This past month I spent time studying for and then taking the certification exam and I am proud to announce that I am no longer just an advisory board member, but a Certified Professional. You can look at all the vendors who have chosen to demonstrate the quality of their work by becoming Validated (the list is here) and all the professionals who have become Certified (here). I’m pleased to join this group.