The Office of Personnel Management will be administering a third iteration of the governmentwide health and wellness survey, WellCheck, to determine where agencies have made improvements in ensuring the health of federal employees, according to a Sept. 7 memo.

“OPM’s Work-Life team will contact agency Worksite Health and Wellness Coordinators, requesting the names of participating worksites and WC points of contact for each agency,” Mark D. Reinhold, associate director of employee services, wrote in the memo to agency human resources directors.

“New agencies and additional work locations are encouraged to participate in the 2018 WC administration. In advance of the survey administration, OPM will host a training session on how to complete the WC survey tool, share a copy of the data call questions and provide guidance for WC POCs. WC will be open for POCs to complete from October to November 2018.”

The survey began in 2014 with 291 worksites from 36 different federal agencies providing responses to a survey based on the 125-question Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Worksite Health Scorecard, which awards points in areas such as occupational health and safety, lactation support and tobacco-free living.

In 2016 the number of worksites responding to the survey increased by 70 and the number of agencies increased by 6.

In both 2014 and 2016, agencies performed best in addressing vaccine preventable diseases, occupational health and safety and tobacco-free living. Agencies struggled with nutrition, organizational supports and lactation support.

In 2016, the Department of Housing and Urban Development Region 2 and the Navy Center for Information Warfare Training Site Groton achieved perfect scores of 286. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Headquarters, NASA’s Langely and Ames Research Centers and the National Institutes of Health also achieved high scores.

Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.

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