Companies On The Move Look For Healthy Workers

It may cost less to do business in places where there's what some people call a culture of health. And that's put Colorado, which has the lowest rates of adult obesity in the country, on the map for companies looking to relocate or expand.

Kelly Brough is making the most of it. She runs the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, and she's creative about luring businesses to relocate to Colorado. She runs a "Colorado loves California" campaign, for instance.

"We do it on Valentine's Day," she says. "The CEOs actually do get valentines from us. And it's been a real creative, cool way to say to companies, 'We know you're out there, and we think you may be interested.' "

Brough says if Colorado can catch executives' attention, she's got the numbers to hook them. And she's talking about more than just the typical tax breaks and labor costs.

"Our obesity rate being the lowest in the nation ranked extremely high for the companies we recently attracted," she said at a luncheon for Denver health leaders.

When Brough meets with businesses, she touts Colorado's low rates of common chronic diseases — diabetes, heart disease and cancer — among the ones that cost companies a lot of money in health insurance claims.

-Eric Whitney, NPR