In an unprecedented Alliance for American health transformation, Gallup, Healthways and America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) are providing a new national pulse of individual and collective health and well-being, as well as solutions for a healthy America.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™, designed to be the Dow Jones of Health, gives a measure of people's well-being.

The Well-Being Index, a unique twenty-five year partnership in research and care, is an on-going daily survey that began in January 2008. It surveys 1,000 Americans 350 days per year.

The research and methodology underlying the Well-Being Index is based on the World Health Organization definition of health as "not only the absence of infirmity and disease, but also a state of physical, mental, and social well-being."

The Well-Being Index is comprised of over 40 questions providing an Overall Composite metric based on six individual and interrelated Domains and Indices of Well Being: Life Evaluation, Emotional Health, Physical Health, Healthy Behavior, Work Environment, and Basic Access.

As the largest collection of data for the health and well-being of large populations ever assembled, it will increase an understanding of how those factors impact the financial health of our nation and its communities.

The Well Being Index is a powerful behavioral economics tool. It will assist national, state and community leaders, as well as policy makers and employers to make smart resource allocation decisions for the health and well-being of millions of people and the financial health of the Nation.