Real Health Workplaces
Redesigning Healthcare for Human Thriving
Join the Movement
Real Health Workplaces
Redesigning Healthcare for Human Thriving
Healthcare was built to save lives. It was never meant to break the people who deliver care — but it does.
Real Health Workplaces is a growing movement of leaders, clinicians, and organizations who believe something simple—and radical: Real health is not just the absence of disease. It is the capacity of people and systems to thrive over time.
This movement challenges us to rethink everything from leadership models to daily workflows, from performance metrics to what we truly value. It asks us to stop treating burnout as an individual problem and start addressing it as what it really is: a system design failure that we have the power to fix.
Powered by VOCES Puerto Rico and Impactivo
The Human Truth
The U.S. healthcare system isn't broken because people aren't resilient enough
Healthcare runs on endurance. It operates in a state of perpetual crisis, where long hours and invisible labor have become normalized. Chronic understaffing isn't an occasional challenge—it's the baseline. Leadership models continue to reward sacrifice over sustainability, creating cultures where working until breaking is seen as commitment rather than dysfunction.
Constant Crisis Mode
Every shift feels like an emergency, with no time to pause, reflect, or recover between demands.
Invisible Labor
Documentation, coordination, emotional support—the work that makes care possible but rarely gets recognized or resourced.
Chronic Understaffing
Asking fewer people to do more work, faster, with less support—and expecting excellence anyway.
Sacrifice as Leadership
Organizational cultures that conflate exhaustion with dedication, creating impossible standards for success.
Burnout isn't a personal failure. It's a design failure. And design failures can be redesigned.
Why This Matters
Most people in healthcare didn't choose this work to be trapped in an administrative maze of low-value tasks, inefficiency, and repetition. They didn't train for years to spend their days clicking through electronic health records or navigating bureaucratic obstacles that have nothing to do with healing.
They chose healthcare because they wanted to make a tangible difference in people's lives. They came with a calling to heal, to serve with purpose, to lead with compassion, and to be part of something larger than themselves.
Yet too often, the system forces an impossible trade: sacrifice your own health and wellbeing for the chance to have impact. Work until you're depleted. Miss family moments. Ignore your own needs. This has become so normalized that we barely question it anymore.
That trade is no longer acceptable. We can—and must—design healthcare systems where caring for others doesn't require destroying yourself in the process.
Heal
To restore health and wholeness, witnessing transformation in patients and communities
Serve
To show up with purpose and presence during people's most vulnerable moments
Lead
To guide teams and systems toward better ways of delivering compassionate care
Make a Difference
To know that your work matters and creates lasting positive change
The Reframe
What if health wasn't an outcome… but a capacity we build every day?
Real Health represents a fundamental shift in how we think about wellbeing in healthcare settings. It's not about reaching a destination or checking boxes on a wellness checklist. Instead, it's about developing and maintaining the capacity of people and systems to function, grow, and thrive even under pressure.
Adapt Without Breaking
Build flexibility and resilience to respond to changing demands without losing core function or purpose
Recover After Stress
Create structures and practices that allow genuine recovery, not just brief pauses before the next crisis
Lead With Clarity and Compassion
Make decisions grounded in values and evidence, treating both patients and staff with humanity
Sustain Performance Over Time
Maintain high-quality care and meaningful work without depleting the people who make it possible
This definition comes from Impactivo's Real Health Manifesto. When leaders understand Real Health personally, experiencing it in their own lives and work, that is the begining of structural systems change . Personal transformation can become the foundation for organizational redesign.
A Movement
Real Health Workplaces is not another program
We've had enough programs. More apps to download, more modules to complete, more individual interventions that ask burned-out people to somehow find the energy to fix themselves. That approach has failed because it misunderstands the problem.
Real Health Workplaces is a shared commitment to redesign healthcare so humans can thrive. It's a growing coalition of people who refuse to accept that breaking people is the cost of saving lives.
This movement brings together diverse voices united by a common belief: healthcare can be both excellent and humane. We can deliver outstanding outcomes while honoring the humanity of everyone in the system. These goals are not in conflict—they're interdependent.
Healthcare Leaders
Ready to challenge outdated norms and build systems where excellence and humanity coexist
Clinicians and Staff
Who deserve better than burnout and are ready to co-create sustainable ways of working
Organizations
Aligning performance metrics with humanity, measuring what truly matters for long-term success
Partners
Committed to health for all and building systems designed for sustainability, not just survival
This is about changing how healthcare works, not adding more tasks to already-overwhelming workloads.
How Change Happens
Belief alone doesn't change systems. Practice does.
We've seen what happens when healthcare relies on inspiration without implementation. Leaders attend conferences, get energized by keynote speakers, return to their organizations with grand visions—and then watch those visions dissolve against the reality of entrenched systems, competing priorities, and daily firefighting.
Real transformation requires more than belief. It demands deliberate practice, sustained commitment, clear structures, and accountability mechanisms that make change durable rather than fleeting.
Real Health Workplaces operates at two interconnected levels, each essential to creating lasting change. One level builds shared understanding and standards across the healthcare ecosystem. The other translates those standards into the daily reality of how work actually happens. Together, they create a complete system for transformation.
This dual approach ensures that high-level commitment translates into ground-level transformation, and that front-line innovations inform system-wide standards.
Level 1
The Movement & Standard
Led by VOCES Puerto Rico
VOCES Puerto Rico serves as the backbone organization for this movement, providing the infrastructure, convening power, and strategic coordination needed to build shared meaning and drive durable change across healthcare systems.
As a women-led coalition, VOCES brings deep expertise in transforming how health systems, policy makers, and communities work together. They understand that sustainable change requires more than good intentions—it demands clear standards, accountability structures, and the courage to challenge norms that no longer serve us.
Their work creates the conditions for transformation by building alignment among leaders who might otherwise work in isolation, ensuring that scattered efforts become coordinated movement toward a shared vision of Real Health.
Core Responsibilities
  • Convening cross-sector partners and building coalitions that span traditional boundaries
  • Aligning leaders around a shared definition of Real Health that transcends organizational silos
  • Developing and stewarding the Real Health Workplaces Certification process
  • Setting standards that make human capacity visible, measurable, and accountable
  • Creating frameworks that translate values into operational requirements
Level 2
Implementation in Real Workplaces
Led by Impactivo
Standards and frameworks are essential—but they don't change daily reality by themselves. Someone has to translate vision into the specific behaviors, workflows, and structures that make Real Health possible in the actual places where care happens.
Impactivo bridges the gap between aspiration and implementation. As a women-owned health innovation firm, they bring rigorous methodology to the messy, complex work of organizational change. They don't just tell healthcare leaders what to do—they work alongside them to figure out how to do it within their specific context, constraints, and culture.
This is where the Real Health narrative becomes tangible: in redesigned workflows that reduce unnecessary burden, in leadership behaviors that model sustainability, in team structures that build psychological safety, and in measurement systems that connect wellbeing to performance and return on investment.
01
Leadership Activation and Behavior Change
Moving beyond awareness to concrete shifts in how leaders show up, make decisions, and model Real Health
02
Team-Based Workflow Redesign
Analyzing and restructuring how work actually flows to eliminate waste, reduce friction, and restore meaning
03
Psychological Safety as Infrastructure
Building the conditions for trust, learning, and social connection into the system, not treating them as nice-to-haves
04
Meaningful Measurement
Creating metrics that link wellbeing to performance and ROI, making the business case visible and compelling
The Operating System
Real Health Workplaces is powered by two complementary platforms that work together to create comprehensive transformation. These aren't separate programs—they're integrated components of a complete operating system for organizational change.
Lead In Health®
A leadership and workforce capacity-building system grounded in evidence-based principles from lifestyle medicine, adaptive leadership theory, and care delivery science.
Lead In Health develops leaders who can navigate complexity, model sustainability, and create cultures where both clinical excellence and human thriving are possible.
CareLogix™
An operational redesign platform that translates leadership intent into daily practice by strengthening teams, clarifying roles, reducing systemic friction, and aligning everyday work with long-term capacity.
CareLogix addresses the structural barriers that prevent good intentions from becoming sustainable reality.
Together, these platforms align leadership intent with daily operations, ensuring that strategic vision translates into the specific behaviors, processes, and structures that make Real Health workplaces possible.
What Organizations Experience
Organizations engaged in Real Health Workplaces begin to see measurable shifts across multiple dimensions. These aren't abstract improvements—they're concrete changes that show up in retention data, quality metrics, team dynamics, and the daily experience of coming to work.
The transformation happens gradually, then suddenly. Small changes in how meetings run or how decisions get made begin to compound. Teams start functioning differently. Trust builds. People begin to believe that sustainable excellence might actually be possible.
Reduced Burnout and Moral Distress
People report feeling less depleted, more aligned with their values, and better able to deliver the care they believe in
Stronger Trust and Collaboration
Teams communicate more openly, support each other through challenges, and solve problems together
Improved Retention and Stability
Staff stay longer, reducing costly turnover and preserving institutional knowledge and relationships
Clearer Leadership Pathways
Especially for women, who see viable routes to leadership that don't require sacrificing their health or values
Better Continuity and Safety
Patient care improves when staff have the capacity to be fully present, attentive, and coordinated
Most importantly, people experience something rare: A system finally designed with them — not against them.
This shift in experience is not sentimental—it's strategic. When people work in systems designed for their success, organizational performance improves across every dimension that matters.
The Reality We Must Face
Healthcare is powered by women — but not led by them
The healthcare workforce depends overwhelmingly on women's labor, expertise, and emotional intelligence. Yet leadership remains concentrated in the hands of men, creating a profound disconnect between who does the work and who makes the decisions about how that work happens.
This isn't just an equity issue—it's a design flaw that perpetuates unsustainable systems. Leadership pipelines reward constant availability and sacrifice, reinforcing what's known as the "broken rung"—the critical barrier that prevents women from advancing from entry-level positions into management and beyond.
The consequences show up in burnout data that reveals a workforce pushed past sustainable limits, particularly in contexts already strained by systemic challenges like chronic shortages, migration pressures, and repeated crisis responses.
One of 2
U.S. Healthcare Workers
Report frequent burnout symptoms, reflecting systemic design failures rather than individual weakness
2x
Puerto Rico Burnout Rate
Almost double U.S. mainland levels due to chronic shortages, migration, and repeated system shocks
+3
Puerto Rico Life Expectancy
Years longer than U.S. mainland average despite workforce stress—proving resilience isn't enough
The lesson is clear: Health outcomes can remain strong even when the system is under stress — but workforce capacity cannot.
Real Health Workplaces addresses this gap at the root by redesigning leadership models, advancement pathways, and organizational cultures to support sustainable excellence rather than reward sacrifice.
Born in Puerto Rico. Built for the world.
Real Health Workplaces was shaped in Puerto Rico—a place that has become an unexpected but powerful laboratory for understanding how systems adapt, break, and rebuild under pressure. This origin story matters because it reveals something essential about resilience, leadership, and what becomes possible when communities refuse to accept that suffering is inevitable.
Few places have been forced to build institutional resilience through the kind of repeated, compounding shocks that Puerto Rico has weathered: devastating hurricanes that destroyed infrastructure and displaced entire communities, earthquakes that shook already-fragile systems, epidemics that tested public health capacity, and a global pandemic that arrived on top of everything else.
Why Puerto Rico?
Because extreme conditions reveal fundamental truths about what makes systems truly resilient versus merely functional during calm periods.
Hurricanes and Natural Disasters
Testing every assumption about infrastructure, supply chains, and emergency response capacity
Earthquakes and Ongoing Seismic Activity
Challenging organizations to maintain operations despite physical instability and uncertainty
Epidemics and Public Health Emergencies
Requiring rapid coordination across fragmented systems with limited resources
Global Pandemic Response
Demanding innovation and adaptation while already operating under extraordinary strain
In response to these cascading challenges, Puerto Rico forged extraordinary cross-sector collaboration among healthcare systems, government agencies, community organizations, and leaders across sectors. These weren't formal partnerships created in boardrooms—they were relationships built in the trenches, tested under fire, and proven through results.
These relationships made rapid coordination, trust-based decision-making, and effective execution possible even under extreme pressure. The ability to move quickly without lengthy approval processes, to share resources across organizational boundaries, and to innovate in real-time became competitive advantages.
That origin matters—not as a limitation, but as proof. What works under these conditions can work anywhere. If we can design systems for Real Health in contexts of chronic instability, imagine what becomes possible in settings with more resources and stability.
The Partners
Leadership Forged in Partnership
Real Health Workplaces emerges from the partnership between two women-led organizations that bring complementary strengths to the challenge of healthcare transformation. This isn't a vendor relationship or a loose affiliation—it's a deep collaboration built on shared values, proven results, and mutual respect.
Together, they provide what healthcare needs most: inspiring narrative combined with rigorous execution, visionary standards grounded in operational reality, and a proven track record of making complex change actually work.
VOCES Puerto Rico
A women-led coalition transforming how health systems, policy makers, and communities work together for durable change. VOCES brings the convening power, strategic coordination, and standard-setting expertise needed to build movements that outlast individual initiatives.
They understand that sustainable transformation requires more than good intentions—it demands clear frameworks, accountability structures, and the courage to challenge assumptions that no longer serve us.
Impactivo
A women-owned health innovation and implementation firm translating evidence into systems that work—at scale. Impactivo bridges the gap between what we know and what we do, bringing rigorous methodology to the complex work of organizational change.
They don't just advise from the sidelines—they work alongside healthcare leaders to design, test, and refine approaches that fit specific contexts while maintaining fidelity to core principles.
Together: narrative + execution + proof.
The Invitation
This isn't about perfection. It's about choosing a different direction—one where we stop accepting harm as the inevitable cost of excellence and start building systems designed for both.
A direction where health is infrastructure, not an afterthought. Where leadership is human, modeling sustainability rather than martyrdom. Where care is sustainable for everyone involved, not just patients.
Real Health Workplaces is a movement, and movements only work when people step in. They require individuals willing to take the first uncomfortable steps, organizations brave enough to challenge their own practices, and communities committed to supporting each other through the messy middle of transformation.
You might not know exactly how to redesign your organization's workflows or shift your leadership culture. That's okay. The movement provides frameworks, tools, community, and support. What we need from you is the willingness to begin—and the courage to keep going when it gets difficult.
The healthcare workforce cannot wait for perfect solutions or ideal conditions. Every day we delay is another day that talented, caring professionals leave the field. Another day that patients receive fragmented care from exhausted teams. Another day that we accept the unacceptable.
Ready to Begin?
Join healthcare leaders who are redesigning their organizations for human thriving. Request an executive briefing to learn how Real Health Workplaces can support your transformation journey.
Real Health Workplaces is a movement. Movements only work when people step in. Will you be one of them?
Real Health Workplaces
Powered by VOCES Puerto Rico × Impactivo
Born in Puerto Rico. Designed to help healthcare workplaces thrive — everywhere.
What Comes Next
The journey from awareness to action to sustainable transformation follows a clear path, though each organization moves at its own pace based on readiness, context, and capacity.
Whether you're just beginning to explore these ideas or ready to commit to comprehensive transformation, there's a place for you in this movement. The important thing is to start—and to know you won't be doing this alone.
Healthcare Can Be Different
We stand at a crossroads. One path continues the unsustainable status quo—burning through talented people, accepting burnout as normal, and wondering why we can't retain staff or maintain quality. The other path requires courage, but it leads somewhere better.
Real Health Workplaces offers that other path. It's not easy, and it's not quick, but it's possible. We have the frameworks, the tools, the evidence, and the community. What we need is leaders willing to take the first step.
"The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination."
— John Schaar
Healthcare was built by people who believed they could save lives. Now it's time to build healthcare that doesn't break the people doing the saving.
Join us.