Corporate Wellness Programs

Employees get free health screenings and monthly presentations by health care providers. Companies get a free wellness program and the lower health insurance costs that often go with it, Funded by a grant from the U.S. It sounds like a human resources director's dream, but Healthy People 2010 hopes to make it a reality for the Quincy-Hannibal area.
Wellness program assembly room of Commerce and launching this summer, the Healthy People Quincy/Hannibal 2010 Initiative aims to execute wellness programs in companies, to better promote good health in the middle of their employees. Terry Shaw, a Quincy chiropractor and the initiative's local facilitator, hopes the program will take the concept of wellness from buzzword to way of life.
Wellness is sort of a catchphrase, a word people throw around, but there hasn't been a lot done with it for the most part," Shaw said. "What can you do to change the thought process of an individual and get them thinking about their health?"Healthy People 2010 will formally launch here with a Corporate Wellness Symposium in Quincy, a workshop aimed at educating the public on the initiative, introducing the concept of health coaching and helping individuals set manageable personal health goals.
It's a little more of a grassroots program right now until we can swing into the program. If you do something once or twice," like some companies' annual health and wellness fairs, Shaw said, "it's sort of like spray-and-pray. You hope it sticks. If you go month after month after month," the chances are better that the message will take. A key prong of the Healthy People 2010 initiative is its program of monthly lunch-and-learn presentations to participating companies on a variety of personal health and wellness themes.