Health and Wellness Programs : What is a Health Promotion Program?

According to the American Journal of Wellness, “Wellness is the science and art of helping people  change their lifestyle to move toward a state of optimal health.

Optimal health is defined as a balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health. Lifestyle change can be facilitated through a combination of efforts to enhance awareness, change behavior, and create environments that support good health practices.

Of the three, supportive environments will probably have the greatest impact in producing lasting change.”

Wellness Program –  Action Steps

The process of building a Health Promotion Program involves –

• Identifying the current health status of your staff

• Determiningthe appropriate programs and interventions to offer

• Promoting and implementing the programs

• Building in motivational incentives

• Evaluating the impact

• Revising programs based on analysis outcomes

It could even include developing policies and procedures that support employee participation in wellness activities at your worksite (like flextime).

Steps to Starting a Health Promotion Program

• Conduct an organizational assessment

• Get management support

• Start a wellness committee

• Obtain worker input

• Create goals and goals

• Create and implement program activities

• Select incentives

• Measure outcomes

Among the ways the government plans to increase the nation’s health is through extensive Wellness Programs.

As reported by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, these programs might help workers live healthier lifestyles by building supportive work environments and offering awareness, education and behavior change programs.

Truly, among the goals of Healthy Individuals  2010, a set of health goals for the nation to achieve by the year 2010, is to raise the proportion of personnel that take part in a comprehensive Health Promotion Program at their worksite to 75 percent.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 7:13 am and is filed under Health Wellness Programs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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