Health Promotion Program Julie Marsh Axia College of University of Phoenix As Americans, we find ourselves doing things that occupy our time more and more each year that do not necessarily benefit our physical or psychosocial well being. Some of the activities that take up the majority our time are working, doing errands or shopping, and running our children all over town. When all of these things are said and done, we are left stressed out and exhausted; usually to the point that we don’t feel like preparing a healthy meal for our families and we stop by the local drive through because it is quick and easy.
According to Axia College (2010), the practice of well behavior is any type of activity that individuals perform in order to promote or maintain their current health and to prevent becoming sick. Some of the activities that fall under the well behavior category are eating right, getting regular medical and dental check ups, and getting plenty of exercise. The human resources department of this company would like to introduce a plan to its employees that promotes and encourages well behavior. The goals of this plan are as follows:
- Participants will engage in a regular exercise program through the company
- Participants will learn ways of eating more healthy
- Participants will learn how to reach a healthy BMI and how to maintain it
- Participants will find ways of overcoming obstacles that may be keeping them from practicing well behavior (alcohol, cigarettes, etc)
This program will be open to any individual that is employed by this company that wishes to participate and that is healthy enough to do so. There will be an opportunity for individuals that are interested in participating to meet with nurses that will be on staff in the cafeteria downstairs for pre-screening and sign ups throughout the week beginning on Tuesday, July 5th. The program will last for 16 weeks and may continue to be provided through the company depending upon the response and participation that it receives. Individuals that participate in the program and maintain the healthy goals that are set will gain from the program in several substantial ways.
The first way that individuals will gain is by looking better and feeling better about their selves through well behavior. Participants are likely to feel more rested and have more energy to do the things that they want to do without feeling tired or run down. Feeling better means that more of our participating employees will feel more apt to have more confidence in themselves and may take on more leadership type roles in the workplace.
It is also important to take into consideration that a well behavior program will encourage participants to set goals and to achieve the goals that they set – making for more opportunities for the employees that do participate to feel that they are part of a team that is making a difference (Self Growth, 2007). The second way that participants will gain is through an incentive program that will be on a sliding scale based upon their performance in the program that will affect the percentage of health insurance premiums that are currently paid by the employee.
For example, an employee that attends 80 percent of the meetings and workout sessions during the first 16 weeks of the program can receive up to a 5 percent discount on the portion of premiums that are paid by the employee. This incentive will be reviewed every 16 weeks and could increase or decrease depending upon performance and participation by that individual. It is an important incentive that can be directly correlated to the program as people that are generally more healthy tend to gain by paying less for insurance premiums.
A similar program was offered nationally for employees of Home Depot that lasted for approximately 12 weeks (Reuters Health, 2009). At the beginning of the program only about 25 percent of the employees were getting the recommended amount of exercise per day. The recommendation was that individuals should be engaging in 30 minutes of intense activity 4 or 5 days per week or about 20 minutes of activities that were considered vigorous 3 or 4 days per week. The participating employees were given pedometers to measure the amount of steps they were making each day.
Meetings were held to encourage the group that was based on a concept of setting goals that were realistic by increasing the amounts of exercise performed each week by only 10 minutes. The group was also split into smaller teams that set goals amongst themselves to motivate them to be more active than their competing peers. At the end of the program, it was found that those that participated took about 2000 more steps per day than they did when the program started, thus showing that it was beneficial.
It also caused the number of employees that were exercising on a regular basis to grow from 25 percent to about 51 percent (Reuters, 2009). Camico Mutual Insurance was another company that offered the same type of program to their employees. As a perk they added an on-site fitness center and offered weight loss and stop smoking classes to their participants. Aside from being rewarded with better health, the company’s insurance carrier, Blue Cross, offered lower premiums to the company. Camico’s human resources department has also boasted that they have fewer employees calling in sick since the plan was implemented (Colliver, 2007).
Because of the success of these programs in other companies, a proposal has been made to add a fitness room to the building. Again, this is based upon the amount of response that the program receives. The company encourages all employees to participate and to express any concerns that they may have pertaining to participation in the program whether it relates to personal or cultural beliefs, or just questions in general. These concerns may be directed to the nurses that will be on staff during sign ups to help anyone in anyway they can.
They will also be on staff every other week on Tuesdays and Thursdays to help anyone that feel they are experiencing set backs in their progress and to assist those that need help reviewing their specific program. As Americans, we find ourselves doing things that occupy our time more and more each year that do not necessarily benefit our physical or psychosocial well being. Some of the activities that take up the majority our time are working, doing errands or shopping, and running our children all over town. When all of these things are said and done, we are left stressed out and exhausted; usually to the point that we don’t feel like preparing a healthy meal for our families and we stop by the local drive through because it is quick and easy. According to Axia College (2010), the practice of well behavior is any type of activity that individuals perform in order to promote or maintain their current health and to prevent becoming sick. Some of the activities that fall under the well behavior category are eating right, getting regular medical and dental check ups, and getting plenty of exercise.
