Do Employees From Less-Healthy Communities Use More Care and Cost More? Seeking to Establish a Business Case for Investment in Community Health.

Introduction: Few studies have examined the impact of community health on employers. We explored whether employed adults and their adult dependents living in less-healthy communities in the greater Philadelphia region used more care and incurred higher costs to employers than employees from healthier communities.

Methods: We used a multi-employer database to identify adult employees and dependents with continuous employment and mapped them to 31 zip code regions.