Andie Rowe:

Years of Experience + Commitment to Well-being =

Seasoned and Effective Health Promotion Professional

Nominated by Anastasia Snelling and Ann Joiner

For over 25 years, Andie Rowe has been an exemplary health promotion professional contributing to the healthcare companies such as United Healthcare and corporations such as Evolent Health to advance the health of individuals and organizations.  Andie has been responsible for American University’s wellness program for nearly three years and is the Director of Employee Wellness and Work-Life within the Office of Human Resources, using her strengths to advance health for faculty, staff, and students to improve both productivity and student learning.  The characteristics that make Andie an exemplary professional include collaborative, innovative, persistent, and responsive with a splash of humor. 

Andie’s previous work had been at United Healthcare where she provided a full spectrum of consumer-orientated health benefit plans and services, assisted more than 25 million individual consumers nationwide achieve improved health and well-being through various health service systems. She also spent time at Evolent Health, a population health management services organization that integrates technology, tools, and on-the-ground resources to support health systems in executing on their population health care transformational objectives. Whether it was working with kids in the community, sick people in the hospital or people on the road to recovery, she found a passion to help others achieve their health and wellness goals. Collectively, this experience has led her to advancing the program at American University.

American University is a private, coeducational, liberal arts curriculum, doctoral institution.  The university employs over 860 faculty and 1,600 staff.  The University is located in Washington, DC, with over 30 buildings on campus and three off-site locations to provide health promotion activities. American University established its “AhealthyU” program in 2008 to enhance the health and well-being of its faculty and staff.  Its vision is to inspire health living to reduce disease risk and enhance quality of life. To accomplish this vision, the program goals are to contain the cost of healthcare by decreasing the risk and incidence of disease and to help AU become an employer of choice by creating a culture of health and well-being. 

Andie and the AhealthyU team have been successful in meeting the program goals by creating programs and policies that are working towards a culture of health at American University. Below are some of Andie’s key activities:

·         Coordinated the annual fall Benefits and Wellness Fair to include multiple wellness vendors along with the healthcare vendors. 

·         Expanded the annual pedometer challenge to include our peer institutions from the community such as George Washington University & Georgetown University) as well as our on-campus service providers.

·         Kicked off the Wellness Council to help better communicate our programs, especially to offsite locations, and to obtain important feedback on current and future programming.

·         Introduced the “Recharge Monday” program to educate faculty and staff on ways to better manage stress; used the program to bring the resources of AU faculty experts to faculty and staff.

·         Introduced the MOVE cardio fitness challenge to encourage all kinds of fitness activities

·         Introduced the Points to AhealthyU game to encourage participation in all wellness programming – participants receive stamps for each program attended and win prizes based on the number of stamps received over a three-month period

·         Implemented multiple forms of communications (print, word of mouth, email, newsletter) to expand attendance at programs

·         Co-chairs the tobacco and smoke-free policy committee

·         Meets regularly with campus partners in the student wellness and recreational fitness departments to find opportunities to work together.

These program accomplishments are applauded by the university.  Andie is forward-thinking and is seeking more outcomes that the program can accomplish.  She encourages her team to be creative in advancing new initiatives.  Andie uses data collected in the annual health screening along with healthcare spending to tailor the wellness program offerings to positively impact the most prevalent health conditions.  She is working toward linking participation in the wellness program activities to the medical benefits plan either through plan design incentives or by offering discounts on healthcare premiums. All of these program support the mission f the university and align with addressing the top risk areas identified through the claims data. 

Andie also holds an Adjunct Faculty appointment in the Department of Health Studies where she teaches courses such as Stress Management and Multicultural Health. Her students continue to provide positive feedback about her classes and stay in touch with her after the class ends.

Beyond the university, she is a board member of the Washington Area Wellness Coalition.  The Coalition meets twice a year and offers seminars and professional networking opportunities for health promotion professionals in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia area. She also serves on the American Heart Association Greater Washington Heart Walk Committee working with other universities to encourage healthy competition amongst our colleagues.

      Andie believes one threat is the transition as the baby boomer generation begins to retire is to tap into the next generation to engage them to participate in wellness activities.  Here at American, Andie sees this as a challenge and opportunity.  Many of our newer employees are not familiar with health insurance and the preventive care benefits that are available. She will be working with her team to educate and encourage this group to take advantage of their health care and mental health benefits. 

            Andie is an outstanding health promotion professional with years of experience and the passion and commitment to create programs and policies that benefit employees and organization. Her advice to other practitioners is to get to know the leadership at your organization and invite them to participate in programs and celebrations.  Their visibility is important to the employees, further you need to be visible and be a role model by taking care of yourself.  As American University transitions to a new president, one of her top priorities is to meet the new president and ask him/her to participate in our health promotion events.