Making Wellness Work On A Shoestring Budget

May 28, 2012
With tight budgets preventing many businesses from investing in wellness consulting resources, a tight budget doesn’t mean your company, church, or other group can’t have a thriving wellness program.  Wellness is a culture.   While the resources and advice of consultants and bells and whistles can be helpful sometimes, the inability to afford them doesn’t mean that your organization or group can’t have a healthy and effective wellness program. 
 
The key to promoting wellness in your workplace, organization or community is to promote a culture of healthy eating, movement and lifestyles.  Establish the culture by leading the way.  Make healthy food choices available at meetings.  Require or urge your leadership to model good eating behavior.  Have a healthy pot luck and challenge employees to bring and share their tastiest, healthy dish.   
 
Encourage leaders and others to incorporate movement into the day.  Walking meetings and other inexpensive activities can help promote health with very little cost.  Encourage employees to walk in walk-a-thons, participate in running groups, walk or skip to lunch, take the stairs,  participate in sports leagues or other similar activities. 
 
Don’t overlook the wealth of available free resources.  Project COPE”s Play For Life Program relies upon a host of free often government provided resources.   Many great wellness tools are available from NIH and other government sources at little or no cost including the newly released NIH and the Weight of the Nation resources just made available by NIH here.
 
Project COPE: Coalition On Patient Empowerment & Coalition For Responsible Health Care Quality

Project COPE: Coalition on Patient Empowerment & the Coalition for Responsible Health Care Quality  are coalitions of individuals and organizations that share the belief that every American and American organization has a stake, and something to contribute to our ability to find and implement the best options for ensuring that the U.S. health care system provides quality, affordable health care.

Health care impacts every individual and every organization in America.  Consequently, every American citizen and organization including but not limited to health care providers, employers, insurer, and community organizations should take part.    The government, health care providers, insurers and community organizations can help by providing education and resources to make understanding and dealing with the realities of illness, disability or aging easier for a patient and their family, the affected employers and others. At the end of the day, however, caring for people requires the human touch.  Americans can best improve health care by not waiting for someone else to step up or speak up. 

Project COPE urges and invites each individual and organization speak up to help communicate and act to make health care work for themselves, their families and others when you can and share your input to help preserve and continue to develop real meaningful improvements to our health care system by joining Project COPE: Coalition for Patient Empowerment here by sharing ideas, tools and other solutions and other resources. 

Other Helpful Resources & Other Information

We hope that this information is useful to you.   If you found these updates of interest, you also be interested in one or more of the following other recent articles published on the Coalition for Responsible Health Care Reform electronic publication available here, our electronic Solutions Law Press Health Care Update publication available here, or our HR & Benefits Update electronic publication available here . 

Wellness is a culture.   While the resources and advice of consultants and bells and whistles can be helpful sometimes, the inability to afford them doesn’t mean that your organization or group can’t have a healthy and effective wellness program. 
 
The key to promoting wellness in your workplace, organization or community is to promote a culture of healthy eating, movement and lifestyles.  Establish the culture by leading the way.  Make healthy food choices available at meetings.  Require or encourage your leadership to model good eating behavior.  Have a healthy pot luck and challenge employees to bring and share their tastiest, healthy dish.   
 
Encourage leaders and employees and others to incorporate movement into the day.  Walking meetings and other inexpensive activities can help promote health with very little expense.  Encourage employees to walk in walk-a-thons, participate in running groups, participate in sports leagues or other similar activities.
 
Don’t overlook the wealth of available free resources.  Project COPE”s Play For Life Program relies upon a host of free often government provided resources.   Many great wellness tools are available from NIH and other government sources at little or no cost including the newly released NIH and the Weight of the Nation resources just made available by NIH here.
 
The key to wellness is getting started and keeping going.   Making healthy living part of your culture can pay big benefits in health and absentee savings, increased productivity and workforce retention.  What are you waiting for?  Get moving!
Other Helpful Resources & Other Information
 
We hope that this information is useful to you.   If you found these updates of interest, you also be interested in one or more of the following other recent articles published on the Coalition for Responsible Health Care Reform electronic publication available here, our electronic Solutions Law Press Health Care Update publication available here, or our HR & Benefits Update electronic publication available here . 

For Help or More Information

If you need help reviewing and updating, administering or defending your group health or other employee benefit, human resources, insurance, health care matters or related documents or practices, please contact the author of this update, Cynthia Marcotte Stamer.

A Fellow in the American College of Employee Benefit Council, immediate past Chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) RPTE Employee Benefits & Other Compensation Group and current Co-Chair of its Welfare Benefit Committee, Vice-Chair of the ABA TIPS Employee Benefits Committee, a council member of the ABA Joint Committee on Employee Benefits, and past Chair of the ABA Health Law Section Managed Care & Insurance Interest Group, Ms. Stamer is recognized, internationally, nationally and locally for her more than 24 years of work, advocacy, education and publications on cutting edge health and managed care, employee benefit, human resources and related workforce, insurance and financial services, and health care matters. 

A board certified labor and employment attorney widely known for her extensive and creative knowledge and experienced with these and other employment, employee benefit and compensation matters, Ms. Stamer continuously advises and assists employers, employee benefit plans, their sponsoring employers, fiduciaries, insurers, administrators, service providers, insurers and others to monitor and respond to evolving legal and operational requirements and to design, administer, document and defend medical and other welfare benefit, qualified and non-qualified deferred compensation and retirement, severance and other employee benefit, compensation, and human resources, management and other programs and practices tailored to the client’s human resources, employee benefits or other management goals.  A primary drafter of the Bolivian Social Security pension privatization law, Ms. Stamer also works extensively with management, service provider and other clients to monitor legislative and regulatory developments and to deal with Congressional and state legislators, regulators, and enforcement officials concerning regulatory, investigatory or enforcement concerns. 

Recognized in Who’s Who In American Professionals and both an American Bar Association (ABA) and a State Bar of Texas Fellow, Ms. Stamer serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Employee Benefits News, the editor and publisher of Solutions Law Press HR & Benefits Update and other Solutions Law Press Publications, and active in a multitude of other employee benefits, human resources and other professional and civic organizations.   She also is a widely published author and highly regarded speaker on these matters. Her insights on these and other matters appear in the Bureau of National Affairs, Spencer Publications, the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Business Journal, the Houston Business Journal, Modern and many other national and local publications.   You can learn more about Ms. Stamer and her experience, review some of her other training, speaking, publications and other resources, and register to receive future updates about developments on these and other concerns from Ms. Stamer here.

Other Resources

If you found this update of interest, you also may be interested in reviewing some of the other updates and publications authored by Ms. Stamer available including:

About Solutions Law Press

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©2012 Cynthia Marcotte Stamer, P.C.  Non-exclusive license to republish granted to Solutions Law Press.  All other rights reserved.