Change Maker in Action Series
The NAM Change Maker Campaign advances the National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being and the national movement to support health workforce well-being. This webinar series, among other campaign activities, aims to facilitate information-sharing and collaboration in a dynamic way, document the impact of ongoing initiatives, and amplify effective solutions to common challenges.
Meetings and Materials
Access the guides that resulted from each event below. Join the Change Maker network to receive access to recordings of the series.
5/27/26 Event
- Discusses how to shift from making the case for well-being to ensuring meaningful implementation and integration of well-being initiatives (i.e., “getting the work done”)
- Shares real-world examples of organizations that have successfully operationalized well-being initiatives with varying levels of programmatic support and institutional buy-in
- Explores strategies for managing competing organizational priorities, navigating large, complex networks, and building partnerships and collaborations within an organization
Featured Change Maker Accelerators & Coaches
- Jonathan Ripp, MD, MPH, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
- Jennifer Bickel, MD, Vice President & Chief Wellness Officer, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
- Ruben Sanchez, MD, Chief Wellness Officer & Regional Assistant Medical Director, Southern California Permanente Medical Group
- Jeremy Segall, MA, RDT, LCAT, FPCC, System Chief Wellness Officer & Assistant Vice President, Human Experience, NYC Health + Hospitals
From Silos to Synergy: Communicating and Collaborating for Well-Being
11/12/25 Event
- Highlights specific communications strategies for different health care audiences (e.g. trainees, faculty, frontline staff, etc.)
- Discusses institutional variations and successful, on-the-ground practices to communicate well-being work in uncertain times and to new generations of health workers
- Explains cross-cutting tactics for breaking silos and encouraging collaboration between well-being departments and other partners
Featured Change Maker Accelerators & Coaches
- Megan Furnari, MD, MS, Associate Chief Wellness Officer, Oregon Health and Science University
- Cori McClure Poffenberger, MD, Professor and Vice Chair for Wellbeing, University of New Mexico School of Medicine
- Mark Speicher, PhD, MHA, Senior VP of Research, Learning and Innovation, American Association of Osteopathic Colleges
- Evan Thoman, MS, PMP, CWP, Chief Well-Being Officer, Emory Healthcare
If the trust is there, and the relationships are there, there’s more conversation, communication, and engagement, and then we know how to work better together.
Guide Highlights
Now more than ever, organizations are striving to invest in well-being initiatives while navigating ongoing resource constraints and unpredictability. In this environment, a lack of trust and collaboration can lead individuals and teams to operate in silos with limited communication and reduced engagement. This can prevent organizations from fully understanding and responding to workforce needs, while also contributing to duplicated efforts, missed opportunities, and reduced performance at both the individual and system levels. This reality presents an opportunity to reimagine how well-being departments and other stakeholders communicate, collaborate, and learn from each other. Breaking down silos and strengthening coordination across departments, disciplines, and partners can help organizations identify and adapt effective practices across settings, creating new pathways to advance well-being.
The following strategies are interconnected and mutually reinforcing, offering a flexible approach to advancing well-being through stronger communication and collaboration across a variety of organizational settings. While not strictly linear, these strategies are designed to build on one another, from trust building to bidirectional communication, integration, and ultimately measurement and continuous improvement.
Build and Strengthen Trust
Trust between well-being departments and their partners is a prerequisite for establishing relationships and enabling meaningful collaboration. Without it, individuals and teams default to working in isolation, especially in times of scarcity. However, with trust, communication, collaboration, and engagement can thrive, creating systems that work better for everyone.
How to Get Started: Building trust requires intentional efforts, including clear communication and transparency. Well-being leaders and organizational leadership should engage stakeholders with genuine curiosity and active listening. Well-being efforts and teams should be visible and accessible, and they should demonstrate responsiveness by closing feedback loops. Trust grows when organizations consistently seek input, respond to concerns, and demonstrate how feedback influences decisions. Small actions, such as reporting back on points raised during a meeting, can build credibility and encourage future engagement.
Establish Bidirectional Communication Pathways
Once trust is established, it must be intentionally sustained through consistent and transparent communication. Engaging with people throughout the organization through advisory groups, cross-functional partnerships, local champions, or peer-led support structures can help facilitate information flow between frontline staff, well-being teams, and organizational leadership.
How to Get Started: Communication pathways help organizations identify emerging concerns and understand how policies and workflows affect staff. Advisory councils, local champions, and other structured forums can surface frontline perspectives and help leaders communicate changes back to affected groups. Reporting back on input received and actions taken, with messaging tailored to resonate with different audiences, demonstrates accountability and strengthens partnerships.
Embed Well-Being into Culture and Everyday Practice
Well-being efforts are most effective when incorporated into existing systems, structures, and daily work. Integrating well-being into curricula, workflows, leadership practices, and learning environments creates opportunities for collaboration between well-being offices and partners while helping ensure it is considered alongside other organizational priorities.
How to Get Started: Intentional partnerships (e.g., with HR, faculty, learners, leadership) are essential for integration, as they create natural channels for ongoing communication, feedback, and coordination. Shared accountability across the organization and executive leadership team helps ensure decision-making accounts for impacts on the workforce. Well-being efforts should be communicated in ways that connect to the purpose of individuals’ work. Leaders and educators can reinforce well-being by incorporating it into routine conversations, daily actions, and decision-making processes to help normalize it as a core aspect of professional practice. Over time, this helps transform well-being from a siloed initiative into a system-wide approach.
Use Measurement to Guide Efforts
Measurement is a powerful tool for engaging partners and aligning efforts. Data should extend beyond well-being surveys to assess organizational drivers of workforce experience, such as teamwork, administrative burden, and workflow efficiency. These data can help identify root causes of burnout, support the prioritization of improvement efforts, and serve as an accountability mechanism.
How to Get Started: Metrics and assessment tools should be selected collaboratively to ensure they capture meaningful and relevant information while also building buy-in across stakeholders. Once collected, data should be communicated in ways that clearly tell the story of the state of well-being within an organization. Sharing results transparently, and inviting reflection and feedback, creates opportunities for dialogue, strengthens accountability, and helps target improvement efforts.
Cross-Cutting Approaches for Implementing Key Strategies
NAM Change Makers reflected on specific strategies and cross-cutting approaches for strengthening communication, breaking down silos, and encouraging collaboration between well-being departments and other partners.
- Visibility and Engagement: Increasing the visibility of well-being resources and initiatives fosters trust and engagement
- Mindset Shifts: Encouraging shifts in how individuals understand and approach well-being supports its integration into everyday practice and helps normalize it as part of professional culture
- Governance Structures: Advisory councils and similar structures facilitate bidirectional communication and play a key role in guiding and disseminating measurement efforts
9/25/25 Event
- Chronicles how various organizations have strategically evolved their well-being programs over time while staying true to their well-being missions
- Offers lessons learned that they wish were available in their first years as well-being leaders
- And more!
Featured Change Maker Accelerators & Coaches
- Maureen “Mo” Leffler, DO, MPH, Chief Wellbeing Officer, ChristianaCare
- Elizabeth Harry, MD,Chief Well-Being Officer and Clinical Associate Professor, Michigan Medicine
- Amy Locke, MD, FAAFP,Chief Wellness Officer and Professor at University of Utah Health
Partnership, partnership, partnership—you can’t do this work alone, even if you have the biggest team in the world. Well-being has to be everybody’s job who works at the organization.
Guide Highlights
The NAM’s National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being is designed to achieve the “Quintuple Aim” of optimizing health system performance and patient outcomes. Focusing on improving provider well-being is a core objective of the Quintuple Aim, alongside improving population health, enhancing the patient care experience, reducing costs, and advancing health equity. Building a culture that supports health worker well-being helps ensure safe, high-quality health care delivery through times of change.
There will be seasons when it is more challenging to advance well-being initiatives, especially as executives seek to streamline individual efforts. However, this can be an opportunity to reinforce a systems approach by coalescing workstreams around the importance of improving patient outcomes, explicitly aligning with internal partners on shared missions, and leveraging existing infrastructure and resources. Maintaining flexibility when building partnerships is a key component of well-being work that successfully encompasses systems- and individual-level interventions.
Link Well-Being Programs to Patient Outcomes
Striving for better patient outcomes is a mission that often explicitly unites health care executives and health workers. Organizations can benefit from approaching well-being with the level of rigor and prioritization applied to safety and quality because investments in health worker well-being enable the conditions that support safe care. Leading organizations are increasingly tracking the relationship between patient and provider metrics to better build the business case for investments in both patient safety and workforce well-being.
Aim for Alignment over Addition
Aligning well-being programs with core organizational efforts can boost efficiency by creating shared infrastructure that would be valuable to all partners—and helps
reinforce that well-being work is not an “extra” consideration. Well-being programs become sustainable as leaders align existing resources, develop trusted change agents, and make work design as much of a priority as clinical quality.
Finding Strength in Integration and Multidisciplinary Perspectives
On developing a model for engaging well-being champions:
Many models are available but creating a more structured program helps ensure consistent, repeatable outcomes, especially as the program evolves and scales across an organization. Intentionally structuring initiatives also benefits nonphysician health professionals, ensuring they aren’t just participants, but leaders and co-designers.
On the expertise needed to lead well-being programs:
Anyone involved with occupational well-being (e.g., experts in nursing, midwifery, psychology, nutrition, exercise, public health, environmental health, engineering, and systems) is well-positioned to contribute to well-being conversations. Involving a range of professional backgrounds enables a system to address workforce needs in a comprehensive way, rather than just focusing on the perspective of a single profession. For example, human factors engineers help identify how to reduce cognitive load, nurses bring frontline insights into workflow and safety, and psychologists contribute expertise in resilience and behavioral health.
11/6/24 Event
- Discusses well-being recognition and credentialing programs as a tool for improving organizational culture and shares various pathways to a successful application
- Identifies ways to leverage recognition and credentialing programs as a strategy to communicate the value of well-being programming to leadership and employees
Featured Change Maker Accelerators & Coaches
- Thomas Campbell, MD, Chief Wellness Officer, Allegheny Health Network
- Nadia Charguia, MD, Executive Medical Director of Health and Well-Being Program, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
- Debbie Newman, MA, LMFT, Senior Consultant, Physician Wellness and Peer Support, Southern California Permanente Medical Group
- Katrina Wright, MBA, Administrative Director, Faculty and Academic Wellness, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Recognition programs can serve as a national benchmark and show how we can shape our programs and initiatives to rise to that. There are fantastic, embedded tools in recognition programs.
Guide Highlights
Recognition and credentialing programs are voluntary ways that organizations can signal their commitment and excellence in promoting the well-being of their health workforce. Some programs were designed for subsets of the health workforce, including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, while other programs are dedicated to the entire health workforce. Recipients and awardees claim recognition programs go beyond rewards; they are strategic tools for education, evaluation, and improvement that can have positive impacts not only for the intended health workers but also employees across an organization as they strengthen their overall strategies and processes.
Deciding Which Recognition & Credentialing Programs To Apply For
As many organizations transition from individual solutions to a systems-based approach for addressing well-being, recognition programs provide a valuable way to assess progress and serve as a roadmap for continuous improvement in programming. When applying for recognition and credentialing programs, organizations take into account the application requirements, such as extensive data reporting, which stretch available time and human resources.
Therefore, not every award is best suited for every organization. According to several well-being leaders, the primary goal of achieving recognition is to underscore the importance of continuing current investments in well-being--but not detract from developing an integrated organizational strategy for fostering positive work and learning environments for health workers.
Leveraging the Application Process & Recognition
Collaboration & Communications
The process of applying for recognition and credentialing programs provides an explicit occasion for collaboration across various departments within an organization. As collaborators work to gather components of the application, this process can increase awareness of well-being initiatives internally and promote lasting relationships and channels of communication. Additionally, it provides an opportunity to
engage leaders in conversations about well-being, providing additional motivation for committing to the health and welfare of the workforce.
Roadmap & Framework
These programs can foster open and honest dialogue by encouraging organizations to use the award criteria as a tool for self-assessment. Organizations can use these frameworks as a roadmap to track their progress and identify areas for improvement. Though organizations may feel unprepared to apply or may not attain the recognition level they were expecting, these frameworks help identify areas for improvement. In addition, communicating results among team members is crucial for longitudinal progress. It ultimately promotes transparency.
The content on this page does not necessarily represent the views of any one organization, the NAM, or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. We are sharing this content based on the expert guidance of the Clinician Well-Being Collaborative network to serve as a resource.
The funding support extended by the NAM Clinician Well-Being Collaborative’s sponsors makes work like this possible.
