How dieticians can improve health and lower benefits costs

Diet plays a huge role in disease prevention and management, potentially influencing how often an employee heads to the doctor and how much they pay for it. Yet nutrition support isn't a top-line item in many benefit plans — this healthcare company wants to change that. 

According to research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, people who improved the health of their diet by even 25% could reduce their risk of dying from cancer by up to 18%, reduce the risk of dying from heart disease by up to 13%, and reduce risk of respiratory disease by up to 46%. But it's not easy to build a healthy diet employees would actually want to stick to, at least not without some help. That's where dietitians come in. 

Marathon Health, which gives employers access to local networks of primary care and mental health providers, includes registered dietitians on their care teams. This means employees have the same level of access to dietitians as they do to other primary care physicians.

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"Nutrition is the baseline of all health," says Monica McCorkle, director of health coaching and nutrition services at Marathon Health. "You can have a pill prescribed to you by a doctor to manage something like diabetes, but what you eat is important. It affects the outcome."

Employers do not have to partner with Marathon Health to give employees access to dietitians, but McCorkle does encourage employers to reconsider just how affordable and accessible their preventive and primary care services are. Ideally, every employee could see a registered dietitian, complete an assessment and work with them throughout the year to create a diet that would not only help them manage predispositions to conditions like diabetes or hypertension, but actually be appetizing, too, shares McCorkle. 

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"Dietitians will ask key questions about their family: Who does the cooking, what their access to food looks like and history of eating disorders to help manage or prevent chronic conditions," she says. "And if we can prevent conditions like diabetes early, then we can save employers a lot of money."

According to the CDC, diabetes costs employers nearly $106 billion in reduced productivity, absenteeism and disability — that's not even counting how it impacts employers' premiums and medical claims. McCorkle points out that employers need a healthier workforce if they want to pay less for healthcare. And for employees already struggling with chronic conditions, better nutrition can lower the risk of those issues becoming disabling and deadly; that's why even pricey, innovative medications like GLP-1s are meant to be used alongside diet and behavioral changes, stresses McCorkle.

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As employers strategize how to weather increasing healthcare costs, preventive care will continue to pop up. It's up to employers to decide how to approach it, but McCorkle is confident diet is the best place to start. 

"We really need a good diet to live stronger and longer lives," she says. "There's so much value in the magic of food."