BACKGROUND ON GRANT-FUNDED COMMUNITY-BASED INITIATIVES (CBIs)

A national initiative was recently launched to create healthier workforces in one hundred communities per year for the next ten years through an expanded Healthy People 2010 Grant. Each community-based initiative will provide participating employers with education and resources designed to identify and mitigate behavioral and lifestyle risk factors without any employer investment.

"Our focus has broadened from a singular national initiative to a community by community emphasis made possible through the additional funding provided to the United States Wellness Chamber of Commerce from the Healthy People 2010 Grant", reports Evan Sanchez, Risk Management Consultant with the Healthy People 2010 Grant. "This is very exciting to have the ability to work with local stakeholders in each community to create a tailored campaign to meet our goal of 75% of employers having an active worksite-based wellness and prevention program in place with a minimum of 75% employee participation. It is important to recognize that this is not a cookie-cutter approach. Instead, we’ll leverage best practices from coordinated initiatives nationally while each local Advisory Board will truly guide the priorities and programming in each community".

Participating employers meeting pre-determined criteria will be publically recognized as a “Healthy Workplace”. The five criteria include:
1. annual identification of behavioral and lifestyle risk factors;
2. employee access to risk mitigation from all three components—physical, mental/emotional, and financial/legal;
3. consistent, year-round education addressing all three components;
4. adequate incentives to generate a minimum of 75% employee participation; and
5. inclusion of spouses and dependents to create a healthier community overall.

The first step in each community-based initiative will be the creation of a nine person Advisory Board. Sanchez reports that the Advisory Board will be a visible leadership team who will actively seek collaboration with relevant influencers including the local Chamber, area trade associations, and insurance professionals in addition to monitoring the on-going success of the initiative. Advisory Board Membership will be composed of a combination of local participating health and wellness professionals, participating employer representatives, and relevant community stakeholders. 

"Consistent visibility through education" is the focus of the community-based initiative according to Sanchez. "As recent as last week, we were in New York City educating employers and insurance professionals about the very basic concept that the reduction of behavioral and lifestyle risks is the key to cost reduction to the employer, improved well-being of the employees, and getting our arms around the national health care crisis. It continues to amaze us how few employers have effective programming in place to identify and mitigate these risks due to inadequate familiarity with the cause and effect relationship between health risks and claims and no-cost solutions available in the marketplace."

To increase visibility of the community-based initiatives and increase participation, a number of strategies will be utilized including a monthly luncheon to educate local stakeholders, a dedicated website for each local initiative promoting those who are actively involved and a resource listing, a strong emphasis on collaboration with local organizations, and the newly created “Healthy Workplace” designation for qualified employers.

OPPORTUNITY TO GET INVOLVED

We are currently seeking additional communities to implement the Grant-funded initiative in addition to those already "chartered".  Contact us today to nominate your community and to get involved by emailing us by clicking here.