What’s a Wellness Program?

As reported by the American Journal of Wellness, “Wellness is the science and art of assisting 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 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 workers

• Decidingthe appropriate programs and interventions to offer

• Promoting and beginning the programs

• Building in motivational incentives

• Measuring the impact

• Revising programs based on evaluation outcomes

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

Steps to Starting a Wellness Program

• Conduct an organizational assessment

• Obtain management support

• Establish a wellness committee

• Obtain worker input

• Create goals and goals

• Design and implement program activities

• Pick incentives

• Evaluate outcomes

Among the ways the government plans to improve the nation’s health is through comprehensive Wellness Programs.

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

In fact, among the objectives of Healthy Individuals  2010, a set of health objectives for the nation to achieve by the year 2010, is to elevate the proportion of workers that participate in a comprehensive Wellness Program at their worksite to 75 percent.