February 10th, 2010
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Issue #7 of the Corporate Wellness Magazine has been released, http://www.corporatewellnessmagazine.com. This is the only magazine dedicated strictly to employee health, wellness, prevention and disease management.
Read the 7th issue of the monthly magazine dedicated exclusively to Corporate Wellness, Health, Wellness and Prevention at http://www.corporatewellnessmagazine.com.
The magazine’s writers are insurance companies, employers and corporate wellness companies who are involved in the industry and therefore bring more of an evidenced based approach to the magazine’s content and articles. Its articles are written by those who are actually implementing and involved in corporate wellness.
Corporate Wellness Magazine is also the official sponsor of the annual Corporate Wellness Conference, http://www.corporatewellnessconference.com, which just took place October 27-28th, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA. The dates for 2010 are September 20th-22nd, also in Los Angeles. It is the only national corporate wellness conference to take place in the U.S. The Corporate Wellness Conference is aimed at employers, insurance companies and health insurance agents who have either implemented corporate wellness plans or are interested in implementing corporate wellness plans.
Michelle Obama’s plan to launch a child obesity initiative in our nation’s school systems could help better the health for our next generation. Through her efforts, President Obama signed a memorandum today that will hopefully help counteract the high numbers of children that are obese in our country today. Her actions will most likely increase the amount of money designated for lunches and activity programs in our children’s schools. The thought process is most likely that more money towards lunch and physical activities means they can afford to spend more on healthier foods and activity programs, thus resulting in less obesity for children in our schools. It’s a great way to start building healthy habits in the inner city and rural areas that might not have had the capacity to do so without this initiative.
Jonathan Edelheit, Editor-in-Chief of the Corporate Wellness Magazine and Anna Konger, Assistant Editor of the Corporate Wellness Magazine (ME!) just came back from the Health and Human Capital Congress in Washington, D.C., which is really the only other corporate wellness type of conference in the country. There were some really good presentations from employers, wellness providers and experts. There seemed to be some rumoring by several people who believed that Healthcare Reform is completely and totally dead and will not just not be delayed, but won’t be resurrected at all.
One common theme of many of the employers presentations is that every employer is different and a wellness program must be designed specifically for a particular employer. There is not one size fits all in wellness, the wellness program has to be customized for the culture of that employer. Another important take away from the conference is the devout belief from employers that wellness absolutely works and provides a Return on Investment (ROI). Unfortunately, it looks like the economic recession has really hit employers hard. There were not many employers at the conference and one attendee who had been there for years, (this was my first time), said that for employers who came the conference was a, “shadow of its former self.” I think employers traveling to conferences will change as the economy recovers and employers start providing budgets for travel for educational conferences. Also, be very aware that governmental wellness programs will be hit very hard and there will be severe budget cuts once the stimulus money wears out in 2011 and 2012. Governmental entities have artificially been able to continue with larger budgets due to the Fed Stimulus Package, but those monies will be running out soon. We shall see how this affects government wellness programs in cities, counties, states and at the federal level.