Almost immediately after starting her job in 2015 as Baltimore’s health commissioner, Leana Wen took a series of walking tours around the city, listening to residents’ concerns.

Much of what she heard was expected, but what she was told by public school students surprised her.

“I thought they’d ask about smoking or STDs,” Wen recalled. “But what every single one of them talked about was mental health.

“They talked about what it was like to grow up in a house where they were the only one to get up in the morning. Everyone else was on drugs.

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The Baltimore City Health Department is encouraging local employers to provide a healthier work environment, using a new online tool that allows companies to assess their workplace's wellness efforts.

The new tool allows area workers to participate in a questionnaire that focuses on nutrition, physical fitness, behavioral health and substance abuse in a work environment. Employees are asked questions such as whether their office offers educational programming about healthy eating, or accessible information on addiction treatment.

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The Baltimore City Health Department has launched a new program aimed at encouraging local companies to provide healthier work environments by offering them a Workplace Wellness designation.

Company leaders can use a questionnaire adapted from a scorecard generated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help them identify priorities, or gaps, in their health promotion programs in nutrition, physical fitness and emotional health.

The questionnaire offers gold, silver and bronze labels to companies that participate. So far, companies receiving a gold label include the Baltimore Ravens, BGE, CareFirst, M&T Bank, T. Rowe Price and Under Armour. Transamerica has been labeled silver and Ayers Saint Gross and RSM have been labeled bronze.

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The number of people who died in Maryland from drug and alcohol related overdoses surged 66 percent in 2016, compared with 2015, exposing the magnitude of the growing opioid epidemic and the ineffectiveness of the increased resources aimed a stemming deaths. 

The 2,089 deaths last year represent an all-time high, triple the tally from 2010, according to the data released Thursday by the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Last year's jump is the state's largest recorded annual increase.

"The numbers are terrible and they are extremely disappointing," said Dr. Leana Wen, health commissioner for Baltimore City, which accounted for about a third of all overdose deaths in the state.

The city saw 694 overdose deaths last year, more than twice the 318 homicides recorded by police.

The greatest number of deaths, both in the city and statewide, were attributed to the illegal opioids heroin and fentanyl, a cheap and powerful drug pouring in from overseas that is typically mixed into heroin without the user's knowledge.

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