Health Workforce Well-Being Day
A Healthy Workforce Means a Healthy You
When workplace policies and practices support the safety and well-being of health workers, health workers can then focus on providing high-quality, personalized, and respectful care. In contrast, high workloads, administrative burdens, and poorly designed technologies divert health workers’ time away from patient care. Health workers and the communities they serve have common goals – for more interaction and access to care, safety, and better outcomes for all. Each of us can play a role in improving health worker well-being, which in turn benefits every patient, every caregiver, every person that will require health care in their lifetime.
March 18 is the national Health Workforce Well-Being (HWWB) Day. The NAM recognizes HWWB Day as an annual commemoration of progress, in pursuit of improved health workforce well-being and patient care outcomes. Many have observed this day of action, including the U.S. Senate by passing a resolution expressing support for the Day, CDC by releasing NIOSH’s Impact Wellbeing Guide, Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, and more.
HWWB Day aims to recognize the importance of protecting health workers’ well-being to sustain our health system and ensure quality patient care. HWWB Day is also a day for action—learning from one another on the progress to advance the movement to support health worker well-being, and expand evidence-informed solutions to make system-wide changes to improve health worker well-being and transform cultures.
2025 Release
Healthy Providers, Healthy Patients: Advancing Workforce Well-Being in the Health Professions
To recognize the second annual HWWB Day, the NAM released a graphic medicine project demonstrating the critical health worker-patient relationship. Through art, the project highlights that health workers and the communities they serve have the common goal of better outcomes for all, and addressing burnout among health workers is one proven way to help build an environment that supports shared well-being.
2025 Activities
- March 17 | NAM Health Workforce Well-Being Day Celebratory Event
- March 18 | Nationwide Observance of Health Workforce Well-Being Day
- Delaware Nurses Association’s Wellbeing at Work – Promoting Professional Fulfillment and Satisfaction for Today’s Health Workforce
- Healing Breaths’ Combating Provider Stress: The Solution is Right Under Your Nose
- Johns Hopkins’ & Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation’s Healthcare Leadership Collaborative
- Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s internal event
- Dell Medical School internal event
- Midwestern University Wellness Committee internal event
- Northwestern Medicine internal event
- March 19: Nabla’s Strategies and Tools for Health System Leaders to Build a Culture of Clinician Well-Being
- March 20: Duke Center for the Advancement of Well-Being Science’s The Science of Sleep with Tips and Tricks
- April 8: StatDebrief’s Debriefing for Well-Being: A Blueprint to Overcome Barriers in Healthcare
- Throughout March and April: ChristianaCare internal events
Share your related event with us and the broader community, and let us know questions at [email protected].
Participate in Health Workforce Well-Being Day
Action
Join the Movement
Click to learn more about your role in the national movement and access relevant tools.
Health Care and Other Institutional Leaders
Commit to establishing well-being as a long-term value
Sign up to be an NAM Change Maker and use available tools to integrate professional well-being into existing systems and operations. Leaders have tremendous responsibility and opportunity to initiate change alongside health workers to address issues at the root of workplace stress and burnout.
Tools
- Change Maker sign up
- NIOSH’s Impact Wellbeing Resources
- ALL IN coalition’s WellBeing First Champion Challenge
- National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being
- Resource Compendium
- Action Steps and Resources for Health Care Leaders
Examples to inspire more action
Hundreds of health care institutions nationwide have signed up to join the NAM’s Change Maker Campaign, declaring their commitment to making health worker well-being a long-term value. Organizations are invited to sign up on a rolling basis. The NAM will continue to highlight Change Makers’ important progress.
Health Workers
Catalyze your institutions to accelerate their well-being efforts
Approach leadership at your organization about becoming an NAM Change Maker. As health workers, you inspire your institution to prioritize well-being as a long-term value of the health system.
Tools
- National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being
- Resource Compendium
- Valid and Reliable Survey Instruments to Measure Burnout, Well-Being, and Other Work-Related Dimensions
Examples to inspire more action
Many NAM Change Maker Accelerators are operationalizing health worker and learner well-being in their strategic plans and core values whether they are a health system, professional association, or accreditation body. Examples include active recruitment of a Chief Wellness Officer, providing infrastructure to support leaders in championing well-being internally, and collecting employee pledges toward embracing well-being as a shared value within their organization. Learn more.
Policymakers
Prevent and reduce the unnecessary burdens that stem from laws, regulations, policies, and standards placed on health workers
Involve health worker input while making policy decisions. Burnout is at crisis levels among health workers but can be improved through changes in policies and practices in how the U.S. health care system operates.
Tools
- National Plan policymaker brief
- National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being
- Addressing Health Worker Burnout: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Building a Thriving Health Workforce
Examples to inspire more action
As of 2024, the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act, a first-of-its-kind legislation supporting health workers’ mental health and well-being, has funded $103 million across 44 organizations to implement evidence-informed strategies that reduce and prevent suicide, burnout, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders.
Patients, Families, and Communities
Foster partnerships, trust, and mutual respect together with your health providers
Contribute to an environment that supports shared well-being. Health workers and the communities they serve have common goals: more time for visits and access to care, safety, and better outcomes for all. We are in this together.
Tools
- Addressing Health Worker Burnout: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Building a Thriving Health Workforce
- Factors Affecting Clinician Well-Being and Resilience Conceptual Model
Examples to inspire more action
NAM Change Maker Accelerators showcase local initiatives that are creatively increasing connections between health workers and the communities they serve. OhioHealth’s Honor Walk for patients on their way to donate their organs and the ACGME-supported Back to Bedside Trading Card Program at Cohen Children’s Medical Center (meant to introduce fun facts about health care workers to young patients) demonstrate different ways—big and small—to foster trust between health workers and their patients while bringing more joy to work. Learn more.
Background
National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being
The national HWWB Day is March 18, the anniversary of the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act being signed into law. The act aims to reduce and prevent suicide, burnout, and mental and behavioral health conditions among health professionals.
In 2022, the NAM Collaborative published the National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being, calling for collective action to strengthen the health workforce’s well-being and restore the health of the nation. The HWWB Day will further the priorities of the National Plan and provide an annual opportunity for collective action.
Health workforce well-being is essential to ensuring health professionals are able to provide high-quality, personalized, and respectful patient care. Health workers have been increasingly strained by their work environments, and as the pressures put on our health workers increase, anxiety, depression, burnout, and overall dissatisfaction have skyrocketed. Health worker well-being is one of the greatest threats to our health care system: it’s estimated that burnout costs the U.S. health care system at least $4.6 billion annually, and over 60% of health care providers experience burnout. Among the world’s 10 leading nations, the United States has the highest rate of preventable patient deaths. A healthy workforce means healthy patients and communities.
2024 Highlights
- The NAM Collaborative and founding partners announced March 18, 2024, as the first annual, national Health Workforce Well-Being Day. Read the full announcement.
- As part of NAM’s HWWB Day celebration, we announced over 350 institutions have now signed up as NAM Change Makers, declaring their commitment to making health worker well-being a long-term value. Join the movement.
- The NAM Collaborative on the first annual HWWB Day shared a project visually depicting reflections on the urgent need to prioritize health worker well-being in the United States. Explore the project.
- The University of California, Irvine (UCI), created this video on why a healthy workforce matters more than ever from different care team members. Thank you to UCI for this inspiration to participate!
- A series of events recognized health workforce well-being, starting with the NAM’s celebratory event on Capitol Hill, featuring the Surgeon General, members of Congress, and founding partners. View the recording of the NAM event.
- Hear why a healthy workforce matters more than ever from a student in this video. Thank you to Rohini Kousalya Siva, MPH, MS-4 (National President, American Medical Student Association), for this inspiration to participate!
Action
Congressional Recognition of Our Efforts
On March 20, the U.S. Senate passed S. RES. 567 – expressing support for the designation of March 18, 2024, as the inaugural “Health Workforce Well-Being Day of Awareness.”
Tim Kaine (D-VA), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Jack Reed (D-RI), Shelley Capito (R-WV), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Susan Margaret Collins (R-ME), Amy Jean Klobuchar (DFL-MN), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Angus Stanley King Jr. (I-ME), Mark Robert Warner (D-VA), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), Mark Edward Kelly (D-AZ) co-sponsored this bipartisan resolution to recognize the seriousness of widespread health care worker burnout in the United States and the need to strengthen health workforce well-being, and to designate March 18, 2024, as the nation’s first Health Workforce Well-Being Day, in parallel to our efforts.
