According to the American Journal of Wellness, “Health Promotion is the science and art of helping individuals 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 develop 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 Wellness Program involves –
• Identifying the current health status of your staff members
• Determiningthe appropriate health promotion programs and interventions to offer
• Marketing and implementing the health promotion programs
• Building in motivational incentives
• Evaluating the impact
• Revising wellness programs based on investigation outcomes
It may even include developing policies and procedures that support employee participation in wellness activities at your worksite (such as flextime).
Steps to Beginning a Wellness Program
• Conduct an organizational assessment
• Get upper management support
• Launch a wellness committee
• Get staff member input
• Create goals and goals
• Design and implement health promotion program activities
• Choose incentives
• Measure outcomes
Among the ways the government plans to improve the nation’s health is through extensive Health Promotion Programs.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, these health promotion programs may help personnel live healthier lifestyles by creating supportive work environments and offering awareness, education and behavior change programs.
In fact, one of the goals of Healthy Individuals 2010, a set of health goals for the nation to achieve by the year 2010, is to elevate the proportion of workforce that participate in a extensive Wellness Program at their workplace to 75%.
