IHRSA Health Promotion for Club Owners

Thanks to everyone who attended the IHRSA workshop on Health Promotion Leads to Healthy Business. Here are notes from the presentation:

http://recesswellness.com/download/RecessIHRSA2009.pdf

Here is a link tofmyi - which we discussed can be a handy tool for managing wellness communities using social networking style tools:

www.fmyi.com

Now go forth and promote health!

Stop the Pop! Headache Pills Make Matters Worse.

Research shows pain relievers make matters worse

Do you suffer from chronic headaches? Research indicates that as many as 50 percent chronic migraines sufferers and 25 percent of all headaches, are actually triggered by the overuse of common both prescription and over-the-counter drugs used to treat them.

So when your head is pounding is there anything you can do to stop the pain?



90% of headaches are primary headaches (i.e. not caused by another medical condition) and can be attributed to tension (tight muscles and spasms of the neck and back), vascular (migraine), and cluster (non medical causes such as stress).

Sitting for long periods without stretching or moving, jaw clenching, and the kind of physical habits we adopt at work can contribute to muscular tension. Short bouts of stretching (20 seconds of stretching every twenty minutes) and exercise (a 5 minute walk around the block) can ease muscular tension, will produce hormones that counter stress and help you relax. While you may not see immediate results, continued adherence to a self-care routine will lead to more overall relaxation and fewer headaches.

Can we make America the Healthiest Nation?

I just received a link from an organization that made the beautiful little film below. Their Web site mentions something I heard but had forgotten:

Our kids will be the first generation of Americans with a shorter life expectancy than ours.

Why doesn't this scare us and make us sad? Can America learn to dream big but make our footprint small? Does seeing something like this inspire you to want to do something about it? The problem might seem too big, but we can all play a part in solving it and the behaviors that drive a healthy world are usually also more environmentally friendly and socially just. So how about it, people, are you in? Who's with me?

$700 billion?! Pffffttt! The bailout is for wimps!

Think the Wall Street credit crisis is bad for business? Well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! I heard a commentary on NPR where an economist being interviewed referred to health care as a “train barreling down on the US Economy.” And while everyone is busy untying the maiden that is the finance industry from the tracks, our back is turned to the real threat chugging toward us with increasing speed.

At $700 billion the current financial bailout is roughly equivalent to 5% of the US GDP. That’s chump change compared to the more than 16% of GDP (yes, that’s over $2.2 trillion) the US spent on health care in 2007. Pop quiz: What’s 34% of 2.2 trillion? Trick answer: The portion of the health care bill that is paid by business. The costs of poor health are outpacing wages, inflation and GDP. By a lot. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation Health care spending has risen about 2.4 percentage points faster than GDP since 1970.

The train shows no signs of slowing. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that by 2016 health care spending will be over $4.1 trillion, or, about 20% of GDP. Okay now do the math again! What’s 34% of $4.1 trillion? Answer: If you are planning to be in business in 9 years then we better get this credit crisis solved or you won’t be able to borrow enough money to pay for health care expenses!

Oh and by the way, this is all happening at a point where growth in corporate profits is on the decline and American productivity has reached an all time high – holding steady after impressive gains. In its annual report the International Labor Organization stated “The difference in [productivity] rankings can be explained by the fact that annual working hours per person employed are considerably higher in the United States than in the majority of European economies.” Unless business plans on lobbying for more hours in a day, their best bet for improving worker productivity will be investing in worker health.

In a study funded by the RAND Corporation, Soeren Mattke and his colleagues stated that “Annual US health-related productivity losses are estimated to reach some $260 billion, attributable not only to absenteeism but also to presenteeism (being present at work but working at a reduced capacity)”. Yes, you did the math correctly, that is $10 billion more than the current infusion of cash that the US treasury will be putting into American banks, but this number directly impacts business’ bottom line!

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says chronic diseases are responsible for 75 percent of the $2 trillion spent on health care in 2005. Such diseases can be dramatically improved by things like: better diet, exercise and self-care. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that if you took all of the Americans who: do not smoke, maintain a healthy weight, consume five or more fruits and vegetables per day, and exercise the surgeon’s general’s recommended 30 minutes 5 days per week, you’d have a whopping 3% of the US population.

So what do employees’ health habits have to do with business?!? Quite a bit as it turns out. American workers spend close to 2,000 hours per year on the job. At the end of a long work day, a half an hour commute and a family waiting to be fed, how many people are realistically going to change and head back out to exercise for 30 minutes? Would you?

If we are going to stop this train then Americans need help with their health. Serious help. Currently the place where they spend the majority of their waking hours is not effectively reinforcing healthy behavior. When it comes to employee health you are competing against things like: physical exhaustion, donuts, prepared foods, comfortable couches, a pack of smokes, and beer! Your savviest competitor’s slickest product has nothing on beer!

If you are busy freaking out about the credit crisis and have relegated employee health to some dark little corner of your organization where the sad, unimaginative and ineffective solutions proposed to reverse the state of your workers' health fly in the face of reality, then good luck with that and we’ll see you in the bread line in 2016.