Professional Development:

I always knew that I wanted to be in the corporate fitness/wellness field because that is where most of us spend the majority of our day.  I hold a Masters Degree in Public Health, plus a double-major in Community Health & Physical Education.  My certifications include: CHES and Aerobic and AFAA group exercise instructor.

The most valuable part of my background has been my public health degree.  I have been able to utilize this knowledge to assist clients in creating award-winning wellness programs (WELCOA, St. Paul Working Family Resource Center, American Heart Association awards and Hennepin County).

Demonstrated Success:

Our most successful programs have actually addressed policies, systems and environments surrounding the areas of healthy eating, physical activity and tobacco.  This is how we have assisted our clients to empower their employees to be healthier and to create a positive culture at their worksites.

Healthy Eating – One of our goals is to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, and decrease sodium, added sugar and saturated fat by addressing vending/healthy snack options, catering and cafeteria food at the worksite. This has also included creating healthy food meeting policies to encourage employees to practice healthy behaviors at the workplace.   

Physical Activity – Another goal of ours is to increase access to facilities, active transportation, and opportunities for physical activity.  This has included assisting organizations with developing onsite fitness facilities/outdoor recreation areas plus the policies to support physical activity at the worksite.  Through the fitness centers, we have been able to offer one-on-one nutritional counseling, personal training, group exercise classes, massage, incentive campaigns, health fairs and more to motivate healthy behaviors.

Tobacco-free Workplace – We also focus on completely tobacco-free environments and provide cessation support through policies, tobacco cessation classes and support.

With the above areas, we have also found success with designing outcomes-based incentive programs for those employees able to achieve healthy numbers with their cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure, BMI/waist and tobacco use.  We administer these programs for clients and provide alternative standards for employees to complete that are unable to achieve the designated healthy goals.  These programs have typically shown 75% or more participation with our clients plus an increase in rewards earned year after year.

As a part of my job, I provide consulting and presentations and for organizations regarding the importance of health promotion at the worksite.  I continually promote and develop wellness programs that use the 7 Benchmarks framework by WELCOA.  As a part of this process, I oftentimes meet with senior management to provide the business case for worksite wellness, plus assist in developing the wellness team.  Following this, I discuss assessment tools with the client, then create an operating plan that focuses on low, medium and high risk employees.  As a part of this operating plan, I build in appropriate interventions, ways to address a supportive environment and also an evaluation plan.

Leadership:

I have served as a leader by furthering my knowledge through continuing education, networking and researching the latest trends.  WELCOA has been an invaluable resource to me and I mention this best-in-class organization in nearly every presentation that I make.  I am frequently asked to speak to groups regarding the importance of Health Promotion and how to start or enhance a worksite wellness program.

I have walked the talk by bringing my own personal stories and challenges in my presentations to organizations.  I emphasize that we are at different behavior change stages in our lives and that it is not a linear line, but one with several peaks and valleys.

My advice to others who are hoping to become leaders in the field is to stay on top of the latest research and trends, but to all stay firm with the best-in-class 7 Benchmarks through WELCOA.

Innovation:

AdvantageHealth is based on the premise that health promotion programs that are built upon WELCOA’s 7 Benchmarks will have the most success.  As a part of this, we assist our clients in developing results-based programs that are carefully researched, strategically designed, flawlessly executed and built for sustainability.  In order to gereneate better results for clients, we focus on a thorough assessment phase in order to identify health risks, needs and interests for individuals as well as the organization. Then, we stratify our interventions in low risk, medium risk and high risk populations in order to meet all needs of the client.  We oftentimes meet with clients are just implementing programs, but they are forgetting about the things that will make their programs sustainable.  Therefore, we have found greater success with implementing healthy policies, support environments and systematic changes to create a healthy wellness culture.

Compelling Vision:

I believe the biggest threats/opportunities will include increasing health care costs due to an unhealthy population.  Although this is a negative for the consumer and organization, our field will continue to be an answer to this issue.  Through prevention, we can create cost savings.  My hope is that government will strive to take more of an initiative to solve our health crisis, possibly through the increased amount of statewide grants to allow those with limited funding for health promotion programs to be able to do more.

In the next five years, my goal is to continue to target small, medium and large sized organizations with policies, systems and environmental changes in order to establish a sustainable health promotion program.  This will also include providing appropriate interventions geared to target health risks; however, I will particularly focus on ways to create sustainable wellness programs.