Health Expert: Wellness doesn't cost, it pays

05/31/2009

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The Worksite Wellness Resource Kit made a regional stop in Washington County on Wednesday as part of a statewide effort to curtail the rising tide of chronic illness and obesity.
Both are rising concerns among business owners whose health costs continue to soar, main presenter and public health expert Jonathon G. Morgan said. Return on investment of instituting a corporate wellness plan can be up to $3.50 per dollar spent, Morgan said. But it can cost more than $100 per worker to institute a comprehensive plan, and requires about 20 hours a week for three to six months to design and implement.

He said only about 40 percent of employers with 100 or more employees have a wellness program. The figure drops to about 9 percent for employers with fewer than 100 workers.

“The mindset is ‘we can’t afford to do it,’” said Morgan. “It’s too expensive. But the reality is, a smaller worksite has an advantage: Less bureaucracy. And they can do it at typically a lower cost.”

Morgan is the physical activity coordinator for the Division of Public Health’s Bureau of Community Health Promotion . He is responsible for developing, coordinating and evaluating physical activity interventions in the state and policies related to the Wisconsin Nutrition and Physical Activity Program.

The Worksite Wellness Toolkit Workshop was held as the second in Economic Development/Washington County’s “Building A Health Workforce Series,” itself a product of an ongoing slate of business seminars.

Sponsors were the Department of Health Services, Washington County Health Department, and Imagine Coffeehouse and Catering Co. of West Bend.

About 25 business officials attended at the Washington County Public Agency Center in West Bend.

The roughly five-year-old program – a collaborative effort between the Wisconsin Partnership for Activities and Nutrition’s business subcommittee and the Chronic Disease Programs of the Wisconsin Division of Public Health — aims to broaden strategies that offset health risks, reduce employer health expenses, and prevent rises in obesity and chronic diseases.

Morgan previously served as director of the Bureau of Emergency Medical Services and Injury Prevention
and spent 12 years as a high school health physical education teacher.

One of his students — for four years — was the late and famously overweight comedian Chris Farley.
“I’m not sure Chris really took this all to heart,” Morgan quipped.

He also showed a tabloid headline with “Swine Flu Spreads” replaced with a mock “Obesity Spreads” headline. One has been labeled a pandemic, but the other is a more pronounced killer, Mor-gan said. “The reality though, especially when you start talking about work sites, is the cause of death in developed countries is (far) more related to chronic diseases. When you talk about where you want to focus your efforts and how you can make a difference on a work site, 70 percent of deaths are illness or heart disease related, versus only 14 percent for communicable (diseases).”

In Wisconsin, more than 62 percent of adults are considered overweight or obese. Additionally, Morgan said, eating out has doubled in the last 20 years, accompanied by a 400 percent rise in fast food consumption and a 150 percent rise in soft drink consumption.

Trips made by car have risen 50 percent, while the number of kids walking to school has plummeted 87 percent, he said. Phy-ed programs have been trimmed or cut at some schools, owing to budget constraints. And 57 percent of those polled said they use their cars regularly for trips that are well below half a mile, Morgan said, “a perfect storm” of factors contributing to obesity.

Morgan said 80 percent of those polled in another recent study said they still aren’t sure what they’ll cook their family for dinner at 4 p.m. on a typical work day. “And then you hear a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial on the way home,” he said.

The Worksite Wellness program was introduced in August 2006 and a second version was released in the fall of 2007. It was developed to help businesses start, expand or maintain wellness programs. Its primary focuses are on combatting poor nutrition, limiting inactivity and cutting tobacco use.

The regional training sessions began about 18 months ago. Introducing wellness programs can cost employers anywhere from $1 to $7 per employee for a minimal paperbased program, or more than $100 for a comprehensive program.

The Worksite Wellness kit filters online and print sources to direct its users to. Six were done last year and two are planned in the coming months for Stevens Point and Madison.

“Part of my purpose in going around and talking is to really spread the message on how we developed the kit,” Morgan said. “And ... we’re looking to partner with local trainers and others so that so that the word can get out to individual work sites. What we’re really hoping to do is have a cadre of trainers because we can only get so far.”