Workplace Wellness - Program Components

Program Components

Healthy People 2010 is a blueprint for a 10-year national initiative to improve the health of all Americans. Employers can use Healthy People 2010 objectives to focus business-sponsored health promotion/disease prevention efforts and measure worksite and community-wide outcomes against national benchmarks. As defined by Healthy People 2010, a comprehensive worksite health promotion program contains five program elements:

1. Health education, which focuses on skill development and lifestyle behavior change along with information dissemination and awareness building, preferably tailored to employees’ interests and needs.
2. Supportive social and physical environments. These include an organization’s expectations regarding healthy behaviors, and implementation of policies that promote health and reduce risk of disease.
3. Integration of the worksite program into your organization’s structure.
4. Linkage to related programs like Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and programs to help employees balance work and family.
5. Worksite screening programs, ideally linked to medical care to ensure follow-up and appropriate treatment as necessary.

In addition, Partnership for Prevention includes two additional components:

1. Support for individual behavior change with follow-up interventions.
2. Evaluation and improvement processes to help enhance the program’s effectiveness and efficiency.

The Centers for Disease Control's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) through its Total Worker Health program offers an extensive list of resources to assist employers, employees, and practitioners with their efforts to implement and develop programs in their organizations that integrate employee health activities. Most of the publicly available reputable sources provides tips and tools, but are not "off-the-shelf" or "turn-key solutions." Organizations wishing to obtain more assistance will find there are numerous private companies offering fee-based services.

The Partnership for Prevention offers extensive background and program-specific information in its Healthy People 2010 and Beyond report which is available to anyone at no charge on the internet.