December 13, 2004 == MEDIA ADVISORY
Calvin College employees will get paid to get fit under a new cooperative
program between the college and Priority Health.
Health by Choice is a program designed by Priority Health and offered to
institutions that use Priority Health. It is intended to help people take more
accountability for their health.
Human resources personnel at Calvin are eager to get started in the program.
"The trend in health care," says Calvin director of human resources Todd
Hubers, "is to incentivize people to take more control of their own health. In
the past health insurance was simply an umbrella for people when they got sick.
Now, health insurance companies, and employers, are recognizing that they need
to do more to help people take steps to stay healthy."
Under the new Health by Choice program at Calvin the college will receive a
reduction on its health care premium for 2005.
Calvin will take that reduction and match it, creating a pool of funds from
which it will do two things.
One, it will add some offerings to its current Healthy Habits program, a
campus-wide effort coordinated by both Human Resources and the Health, Physical
Education, Recreation, Dance and Sport department. Currently the Healthy
Habits program at Calvin offers a number of mostly noontime options to faculty
and staff: things like volleyball, aerobics, water aerobics, pilates, yoga and
more.
Second, the college will give $200 to each employee who participates in the
Health By Choice program.
In order to receive the incentives, participants in the "Health by Choice"
program must accomplish five things:
-complete an online health risk assessment (HRA) at the beginning of the year
-set personal wellness goals
-comply with preventive health care guidelines, including a physical exam
-actively manage health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, cardiovascular
and depression
-update the health risk assessment at least once during the year to measure
how their change in behavior impacts their health risks
The Healthy Habits director is HPERDS professor Julie Walton, who came to
Calvin from Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids where she was an exercise
physiologist and a research coordinator in the HeartReach Program, an
initiative for the prevention of heart disease.
She says Health By Choice is a good complement to the Healthy Habits efforts.
"The cornerstone of the Healthy Habits initiative is to encourage staff to
become and stay physically active," she says. "We've done a lot of cool things
to get people to participate - things like the pedometer contest, the 'Climb
Mount Everest' stair-climbing event and the 'I-Did-A-Sport' cross-training
aerobics contest modeled after the Iditarod. But a little cash won't hurt our
efforts at all!"
The payoff for the college, Hubers says, will come down the road.
"Hopefully this will help our employees make healthier choices and take
preventative steps in health care," he says. "Those things will lead to
healthier employees and, we hope, better control of future health care costs."
Hubers adds that reaction to the program has been very positive with employees
currently signing up at a 75 percent rate.
Contact Todd Hubers at 616-526-6495
-end-
Received on Mon Dec 13 14:04:25 2004
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