In 2002 Prudential Financial’s employee wellness program had a participation rate that many employers would envy, but when executives examined who was signing up, they discovered that African-Americans were greatly underrepresented.
They developed a new communications strategy to get more African-American workers on board, but another problem emerged. As they looked more closely at the company’s health care data, they found that African-American employees had much higher rates of diabetes and hypertension than those from other racial and ethnic groups, according to Dr. K. Andrew Crighton, chief medical officer at Prudential Financial.
