Health promotion: let's get real - column

Health promotion: Let's get real Worksite wellness programs have evolved a great deal over the last decade and a half. When they first sprang up in the 70s, programs were narrowly focused, one-shot, often piecemeal efforts. Few had well-thought-out goals and objectives. Fewer still collected any data to measure their effectiveness. Most were isolated activities.

Early efforts typically served the concerns of upper management--white, middle-class males--and consequently focused on cardiovascular fitness, nutrition, and smoling cessation. These programs were frequently criticized as being frivolous and irrelevant. They were seen as preaching to the converted, reaching out to those who needed the programs the least, since these individuals were already healthy and motivated to exercise.

New vision

As the year 2000 approaches, wellness is expanding to include all employer-sponsored efforts to improve the health of individuals, the company, and the community. These disease prevention, health promotion, and health protection strategies will permeate benefits, policies, programs, and actual work environments.

Such efforts will become increasingly sophisticated, comprehensive, and wide-ranging. They will become so to reflect such business realities as increasing competition, changing labor demographics, a shrinking workforce and, of course, skyrocketing health care costs. Health promotion is becoming part of an overall business survival strategy.

Beyond the gym

As a result of that sophistication, health promotion efforts have moved beyond the gym and are now infiltrating a variety of departments, including:

* safety,

* EAP,

* disability management,

* personnel,

* occupational medicine,

* benefits, and

* training.

In forward-thinking companies, these departments are then sharing information and linking databases in order to develop integrated health data management systems. These systems provide decision-makers with the big picture perspective of health care costs and help managers make better-in-formed decisions.

New audiences, topics

The mostly white-male workforce is a thing of the past. The workforce is changing. It's order, and has more women, more minorities, more immigrants, and more individuals with disabilities.

New approaches are necessary to meet the needs of these unserved groups, as well as to target the needs of groups who are underserved, including blue-collar and shift workers, workers in the field, those at small worksites, and those individuals at highest risk of disease

There is alos growing recognition of the high cost of retiree and dependent health care. Programs must increasingly reach out to these audiences.

In addition to the classic fitness, nutrition, and smoking topics, companies will improve job performance by focusing on mental health promotion, AIDS, effective parenting, day care, communication skills, prenatal health, consumer education, and balancing the demands of work and family.

Some things never change

The basic ingredients in a successful program won't change. They include:

* gaining support of top management;

* involving employees as decision-makers;

* having clear goals and objectives;

* making long-range, comprehensive plans;

* reflecting the needs and values of the target audience;

* making the program convenient; and

* having a supportinve corporate culture.

So, let's get real. By working to improve employee health, companies will reduce health care costs, decrease turnover, lower absenteeism, enhance recruitment, improve morale, better the corporate image, and contribute to the well-being of the community.

COPYRIGHT 1991 A Thomson Healthcare Company
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group