Category — Health and Wellness

Wellness incorporates many facets of our daily lives. From the amount of sleep to the water we drink, to the food that we eat and the activity that we maintain, our health is dependent upon many factors of our lifestyle.

Working to improve our wellness may be challenging to achieve on our own. That is why we can utilize the assistance of a health Coach.

What’s a wellness Coach?

A health coach is a highly educated specialist who’s trained in behavioral change. They hold degrees in Exercise Science, Health Education, Exercise Physiology, Counseling and Education.

A health coach assists person in recognizing current health concerns in addition to preventing future health related issues. These professionals work with customers in a variety of ways including; face-to-face, telephone, instant messaging and / or via email.

The latter of those is also referred to as electronic coaching and is the most efficient and cost effective method of working with a wellness Coach.

No matter what method is used for communication a health coach provides a customized program namely designed to address the needs and concerns of each individual client.

Just how can a health coach help me?

Many individuals maintain a few healthy habits in their lives. One individuals might  be a fitness enthusiast; another may abstain from alcohol and tobacco; while another may maintain a healthy daily diet.

Nonetheless, overall wellness is much like a puzzle, and a high level of health is only achieved when each piece of this puzzle is in place. A wellness coach will assist a personal in correcting his or her missing piece of the puzzle.

An online health coach may address the needs of sleep deprivation, stress management, diet, or any number of health related issues.  The health coach will motivate, guide, and provide valuable resources to provide customers with the necessary tools to make life changes.

How’s a wellness coach unique?

A wellness coach serves a distinctly different purpose than a fitness trainer, a counselor, or a supportive family member or friend. First, a wellness coach is an professional in his or her specific field.

When a patron decides the need for a health coach he or she will complete a health risk appraisal. Based on this assessment the patron will be assigned a health coach particularly selected to address his or her individual needs.

Next, a wellness coach is available electronically 24 hours per day. Through internet based communication customers have the opportunity to contact a wellness coach as much or as little as he could like.

Communication with a wellness coach may range from daily to weekly, and can occur by e-mail, journal or a combination of both. Lastly, a wellness coach is trained to assist in changing the way that the customer thinks and the way that they view themselves.

A wellness coach maintains the purpose of helping the customer to work towards achieving a higher quality in life. This happens by addressing the cause of a certain problem rather than simply addressing the effects of a problem.

A health coach will help person recognize their needs, determine goals, and take the necessary steps towards achieving these goals.

While wellness are growing concerns in our daily lives, it could seem difficult to make the time to educate oneself and address the needs or our well being.

Working with the assistance of a wellness coach empowers us to focus on our specific needs and make progress towards changing.

Do you find it difficult to stay excited when attempting to make changes to your health? Are you aware that changes must be made in your daily life but you don’t know where to begin? When so then wellness coaching might just be the solution you have been seeking.

Health Promotion coaching is a service provided by trained specialists who work with you individually to help you reach your wellness goals. Health Promotion coaching motivates, guides, and supports individual’s for reach sustainable behavioral changes by offering creative solutions to their problems.

Wellness coaching provides individually designed health promotion programs to meet your unique needs by focusing on physical, mental, and emotional health. They help you become proactive in your life by eliminating unhealthy behaviors and making wellness a priority.

Advantages of Health Promotion Coaching for Your Employees

Workers can benefit  from wellness coaching in a selection of ways. Wellness coaching can help individuals decrease major health risks in their lives by changing high risk behaviors.

Some of the many reasons why personnel work with wellness coaches are to get in shape, lose weight, reduce stress, quit smoking, and develop balance in their lives. Wellness coaches assist individuals with current medical problems in addition to preventing future health issues.

Because each wellness program that a wellness coach creates is unique to suit the needs of the patron, they can be certain that it will be a program that is right for them. Many busy workers mistakenly believe that they do not have the time for wellness coaching.

Fortunately wellness coaching specialists are able to provide their services in a selection of convenient ways. While electronic coaching through the use of e-mails and instant messaging has become a well-liked method as a result of its convenience, telephone and face-to-face interactions might also be used.

Workers have the ability to achieve their objectives and improve their lives through the assistance of wellness coaching.

Benefits of Health Promotion Coaching for the Company

The overall advantages of wellness coaching for a corporation are remarkable. Staff Member high risk behaviors such as smoking and obesity cost corporations millions of dollars every year.

These high risk behaviors often cause preventable illness and keep staff members from coming to work. Wellness coaching guides, supports, hold patrons accountable, and ensures that they receive continued motivation to help them achieve their wellness objectives and eliminate unhealthful behaviors in their lives.

By starting health promotion programs and using wellness coaching in their corporations, corporations reduce the risk of avoidable illness in their corporations.

This improves the overall health of staff, lowers healthcare and insurance costs, lowers absenteeism, and ultimately enhances performance and productivity.

When personnel experience the advantages of higher levels wellness in their lives it causes an improvement in job attitude, energy, and morale.

Companies that utilize wellness coaching for their staff experience the benefits of higher productivity.

In today’s fast paced world our busy lives leave little time, energy, or motivation for people  to focus on their own needs.

Those that do seek to improve their wellness traditionally turn to friends, family, specialists and published materials for support and information. All too often those support structures fail to make a lasting difference.

This happens for a number of reasons. Friends and family might not be capable of helping. Working with experts is time eating and costly and very few of us are effective at taking published, generic information and applying it to our own lives.

Gold’s Health Club Winston-Salem has created a new internet based health promotion program that expands the range of support available to those wishing to make healthy lifestyle changes.

The wellness program, Gold’s Gym Health Coach, focuses on the daily challenges of making positive lifestyle changes and has the advantages of being more customized and efficient than generic, published information and less intense and costly than specialist face-to-face counseling.

Utilizing a collaborative problem-solving model the goal isn’t to give advice, but rather to help person think through the issues and come to their own conclusions.

The coach offers ideas for consideration, assists the individual generate ideas of their own, assists the individual consider the various ideas, choose a direction, and then supports them in the implementation of their decision.

Difficult the conventional wisdom that relationship formation requires in-person interaction; Gold’s Health Club has found that members and coaches have the ability to build meaningful relationships via web-based communication.

Utilizing industry leading technology a Gold’s Health Club Health Coach is able to offer members a secure, user-friendly personal website where they can access their coach in a real-time or via email with responses delivered in less than 24 hours.

The site authorizes coaches to hand choose relevant articles that are written on a consumer level and that are targeted to the issue at hand and add them to a member’s web-based personal library.

The site also contains various health promotion programs and tools which are designed to assist the coach and member to set, implement and track specific objectives.

The collaborative relationship formed between member and coach enhances the quality ice and efficiency of service.  The familiarity that a coach develops with a member’s circumstances and meaningful relationships authorizes them over time to more quickly offer useful ideas and assistance.

With traditional call-in assistance lines, the time intensive exercise of getting background and contextual information is repeated each time. IN that scenario efficiency is lost.

Furthermore, Gold’s Health Club Wellness Coach has created a protocol based on key principals from the field of psychotherapy and behavior modification.

The protocol is embedded within a proprietary problem-solving that is based on the theory that people  often act without a good understanding of a problem. Their responses then complicate matters and often make matters worse.

Gold’s Gym Health Coach offers the opportunity to step back, take a second look at what has going on, and quickly asses the factors influencing the situation. But, having an idea of “what” to do is very different than actually “doing” something about it.

People  need help with the follow-through. Now, after figuring out “what” to do, Gold’s Health Club Health Coach focuses on implementation.

Here Gold’s Health Club Wellness Coach builds on sound research and experience from the field of behavior modification that has to do with goal-establishing and with implementation support.

The result is a highly personalized, effective, user-friendly way of bettering the wellness of an individual.  The efficient nature of the web-based relationship allows Gold’s Gym Health Coach to keep the price point within reach of virtually whoever.

Information to evaluate your health promotion program comes from routinely collected screening and follow-up data of your health promotion program that look at process and outcomes of your program.

The Staff Member Health Program has available a computerized case-management system which includes queries that allow easy assessment of process and outcome results at any point in time.

Process Investigation

Process examination looks at the wellness program’s impact as seen at various points in time.

Information that is collected from the various forms that wellness workers fill out ought to supply you with the following -

o  Just how many staff were screened?

o  How many staff members who were referred to a doctor went?

o  Exactly how many staff who expressed interest in wellness programs went?

o  Just how many personnel who were referred to wellness programs went?

o  How many personnel who went to health promotion programs completed them?

o  Just how many staff members are in follow-up caseload?

You can use this type of process examination to evaluate and learn about the health of your health promotion program.

Wellness Program Outcome Investigation

A central objective of the wellness program is to enhance the health of staff. Information on how to judge how well your wellness program is meeting this objective is called “outcome examination” because you are reviewing  the end results or outcome of your wellness program.

In health promotion programs, objectives are measured by specific (outcomes) behavior changes and reductions in health risk levels. Have personnel reduced their blood pressure? Have they lost weight? Are they exercising more? is alcohol consumption at a safe level?

For example these are the kinds of questions you can ask to find out when you are reaching your goals -

o  For employees with high blood pressure (140 / 90 or higher or on medication) at screening, what percentage have it under control (below 140 / 90) a year later?

o  What’s the change in average blood pressure levels among all staff members with high blood pressure 1 year after screening? Two years later?

o  For workforce with high blood cholesterol levels (above 240) at screening, what percentage has lowered their cholesterol to borderline-high levels (200-239)?

o  For staff members with borderline-high blood cholesterol levels, what percentages have reduced their cholesterol to the desirable range (below 200)?

o  What’s the change in average cholesterol levels among all employees with high and borderline-high blood cholesterol levels 1 year after screening? Two years later?

o  For employees who were overweight at screening, what percentage have lost 20 pounds or more a year later? Ten pounds or more? What is the average weight reduction?

o  For staff who were smokers at screening, what percentages have quit smoking? for at least a year?

o  For personnel whose level of alcohol consumption put them at-risk at screening, what percentage have quit drinking alcohol? Are consuming alcohol at levels considered safe by CDC guidelines? Have lowered their drinking, but are still at-risk?

o  For staff members, what percentages are exercising at least three times a week for at least 20 minutes?

o  When levels of fitness were measured, what percentages have improved fitness?

Make certain to set a regular time such as every 6 months to look at which personnel your health promotion program is reaching and how effective it’s at helping them reduce their health risks. Use this information to make new decisions about how to direct your health promotion program efforts. Then make the change you need to improve your health promotion program.

Some may feel that evaluation is a frill; it is not. Examination is a necessary part of a wellness program. You’ll need to know what is working and what is not.

Decision-makers who fund the wellness program need to be updated on the performance of the wellness program. Investigation will provide you with necessary data to maintain and expand the wellness program and convince senior management to continue to support the wellness program.

The keys to a successful health promotion program are persistent one-on-one outreach and follow-up counseling to encourage health improvement, adherence to treatment regimens, changes in lifestyle behaviors, and to prevent relapse.

Periodic outreach and follow-up procedures provide staff with a safety net which keeps them involved in the wellness program and prevents treatment dropout and relapse.

Counselors ought to follow up on staff at least every 6 months throughout the career of the worker at the worksite.  The goals of follow-up are to -

o  Involve staff who’ve health risks in treatment and risk reduction programs.

o  Involve all staff in wellness programs and workplace-wide wellness activities.

o  Support workers in carrying out the risk reduction or health improvement activities they have chosen.

o  Make certain to help personnel follow their treatment regimens.

o  Avoid relapse.

o  Avoid workforce from dropping out.

o  Make sure to help personnel maintain behavior changes.

Follow-up may be conducted in person, by phone, mail, and via computer when the technology is available. Most preferable is an in-person contact.

Computer programs which can do case load management are available to help counselors track information and perform follow-up.

Priorities for Follow-Up

Individuals  with multiple health risks must be at the top of the list. Individuals  in key positions like union leaders or department heads with health risks should also be contacted early so that they learn what the health promotion program is about and can share the information with others.

People  who need a medical examination for high blood pressure or cholesterol should also be targeted early. A lot of workers will have seen their doctors then of the screening, but some will need more encouragement to do so. Those with no health risks can be followed up annually.

A follow-up counseling session can take 20 to 45 minutes.  At minimum, follow-up must include those who were told to seek medical evaluation for high blood pressure readings, high cholesterol readings, or borderline high blood cholesterol readings with 2 or more other risk factors.

It could include those who were identified as at-risk for one or more of the other major risk factors –  at-risk levels of alcohol consumption, being overweight, and having low HDL.

Follow-Up With Physicians

A letter (see forms) should be sent to the doctor or clinic of each staff member who’s high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or is under a doctor’s care.

The letter should explain the wellness program and should include the staff member’s relevant, current health measurements.

Along with the letter, send a self-addressed return envelope. Follow-up with the physician ought to be repeated every 6 months until it is determined that the staff member is under satisfactory control.

Contacting the physician is important for three reasons -

o  The physicians receive employees’ health measurements taken at the workplace.

o  You receive the blood pressure (BP) and cholesterol readings the physician takes and information on the treatment the physician prescribes.

Many times the employee doesn’t have this information or doesn’t remember it.  The information can be used when counseling the employee.

o  Follow-up encourages physicians to pay closer attention to heart disease risk factors among their patients.

The menu approach offers staff a range of choices to support lifestyle changes. It authorizes individuals  to select the type of help that suits their schedules and preferences.

The four basic kinds of wellness programs include -

o  Classes

o  Minigroups

o  Guided self help

o  Individual counseling

Classes

Classes (8 or more) could be an effective means of providing education and social support for behavior change.  The length of a class can vary depending on topic requirements. It isn’t sufficient to offer only classes at a worksite.

A lot of staff are under time constraints with after work commitments and although they might be interested they simply can’t participate because of their schedules.

Employees could  be very eager to begin a wellness program but because of lack of participants to meet class quotas, the wellness program is canceled.

Many national companies like the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, Weight Watchers, etc. offer classes; you should’ve little trouble in identifying a provider for class kind wellness programs.

You could want to contact your local hospital, health department, or YMCA for possible choices. for picking  a provider to provide a health promotion program you could want to review the section on health promotion program structure.

Minigroups

When there is not enough interest to develop a class, those who are interested in a given health topic may be formed into a minigroup (2 to 7).

The minigroup can cover the same content as a class but do so in a less formal manner. Presentation of information and discussion is the major format of the minigroup.

Guided Self-Help

Most workforce don’t want formal help in making health changes; they prefer to do it on their own. In guided self-help, the wellness counselors provide support, materials, and encouragement.

Meeting times could be arranged and contact could be made either in person, by phone, or computer. Materials could be made available at the workplace, or mailed to the individual. Some workplaces now make information available via intranets or the Internet.

Individual Counseling

One of the most successful ways to help individuals change and improve their health status is counseling (or coaching) on a one-on-one basis.

In published studies, health promotion programs which incorporated individual counseling as part of the health promotion program process achieved significantly higher participation rates and achieved greater risk reduction/risk elimination than standard group programs. Studies have demonstrated that individual counseling is both cost effective and cost beneficial.

A wellness counselor must be trained in screening techniques, for in certain situations, they might be required to both screen person and counsel them. They ought to know how to do the following -

o  Review staff member health risks

o  Contact workforce who have health risks.

o  Counsel staff on a one-on-one basis, assisting them set objectives, solve problems, and get specialist help when they need it.

o  Be sure to help personnel follow their treatment recommendations and make lifestyle and health behavior changes.

o  Recruit staff into health promotion programs, like weight reduction and tobacco use cessation.

o  Make sure to work with staff members on a one-on-one basis using guided self-help.

o  Conduct classes and minigroups if necessary.

o  Be sure to work with wellness committee members to plan and conduct worksite-wide wellness activities.

Wellness counselors are health generalists; they must have basic knowledge about a broad range of health topics and health risks.

Counselors should be able to talk with workers about their medical problems and the treatments prescribed by their doctors.

They should’ve a good overview of nutrition, exercise physiology, pathophysiology of disease, pharmacology, psychology, and behavior change skills.

The educational program ought to include approaches to stress awareness/reduction at the environmental level and at the individual level.

Social, physical, and organizational stressors must be explained and methods to ease or elevate stressors must be presented.

At the individual level how changes in attitudes and behaviors help one to cope with stressors; learning techniques to minimize stress response, such as meditation, relaxation response, and exercise.

Content of the program ought to provide the following -

o  Identifying sources of stress

o  Relationship of stress to health

o  Precisely how the individual experiences stress, personal, family, work

o  Solutions for coping and managing stress

o  Techniques for decling stress

o  Value of stress, both negative and positive

o  Practical steps of incorporating stress reduction into lifestyle

Personnel conducting stress management programs should’ve training in psychology, behavioral sciences, or related disciplines like psychological health specialists, counselors, health educators, psychologists, and psychiatrists.

Training in a reputable program on how to teach the stress management course including group process skills is a must.

A nutrition education program ought to include a nutritional needs assessment, education counseling, and referral as necessary.

Educational sessions and materials ought to include the following information -

o  The relationship of nutrition and chronic diseases

o  Improving consuming patterns

o  Relationship of nutrition and proper weight maintenance

o  Exercise

o  Stress

o  Blood pressure

o  Cholesterol

o  Diabetes and other chronic diseases.

o  Nutritionally accurate information regarding the relationship of health to diet, including cholesterol, fats, fiber, alcohol, carbohydrates, salt, sugar, and vitamin/mineral supplementation.

Methods for identifying healthier foods and incorporating low-calorie, high nutrient foods into consuming habits. Guidelines for bettering consuming habits should be based on or consisitent with national recommendations such as the Food Guide Pyramid.

Instructor must be a registered dietitian, registered nurse, or have a baccalaureate degree or higher in health education with training in nutrition.

If an allied health professional instructs the program, a consultation and review of the program design by a registered dietitian is recommended.

It is recommended that smoking cessation programs subscribe to the Code of Practice for Tobacco use Cessation Programs.

Use of tobacco cessation programs should be multi-component with a focus on skills to build positive voluntary behavior modification practices.

Useful techniques include establishing reasons for quitting, understanding the smoking habit, various techniques for stopping and remaining a non-smoker, overcoming the problems of quitting, short-term goal establishing, weight control, stress management, importance of exercise, relationship of alcohol consumption to urges to smoke. Use no aversive or scare tactics.

In health promotion programs that use aids like the “patch” or medications like “Zyban” appropriate consultation should be available on the usage of these aids.

The instructor should have formal training in tobacco use cessation from a nationally recognized organization such as American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, or a nationally recognized commercial program such as Smoke Enders.

Investigation of success is sometimes very dubious in use of tobacco cessation programs. Measurement of success ought to include participation rate, including the number starting the program, the number completing the program, and the average number per session.

Furthermore included, number and% who stopped tobacco use at the end of the program, and the number and% who hadn’t resumed tobacco use by the end of one year.

Participatory fitness programs should include education on benefits of regular exercise and risks of a sedentary lifestyle, its impact on cardiovascular health and illnesses, its relationship with weight control and stress management, and aerobic activity options.

Discussion and practice of safe principles of exercise – warm up, cool down, frequency, intensity, duration, flexibility and strength components.  The wellness program follows guidelines by the American College of Sports Medicine.

Safety precautions should include the following -

o  Informed consent before beginning exercise with clear and complete written and verbal instructions of possible risk, purpose of exercise, exercise format to be followed, opportunity for questions, and a signed informed consent with date.

o  A screening/evaluation of participants to determine when medical evaluation is necessary for exercise such as the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q, see forms).

o  Measurements of blood pressure (BP) and resting heart rate are useful screening information to determine exercise readiness.

o  Participants who fail screening are medically referred and should obtain a written clearance from their doctor to exercise.    

o  The basic content of an group fitness program should include –     

Warm up   5 – 10 minutes

Aerobic exercise   20 – 40 minutes

Cool down   5 – 10 minutes

Exercise instructors should’ve education and training in exercise physiology, physical education, physical therapy or comparable discipline, or possess a current certification by a nationally recognized sports medicine or exercise association, and be CPR qualified.