While a healthy lifestyle calls for a few relatively simple activities, health promotion practitioners have struggled for years to attract and retain people in wellness programs that teach and reinforce them.
Part of the difficulty is going against human nature -- it's easier, and more gratifying in the short term, to sit around than go jogging or to grab a bag of chips than shop for and prepare healthy meals.
Another reason more people don't participate, at least initially, is lack of appealing to their interests.
Here are 8 "laws" for promoting health that help with these issues: 1.
It's better to be new, fresh, exciting, sexy than it is to be better.
We go to great lengths to build a better mousetrap in health promotion, believing if we devise the perfect risk appraisal process or counseling technique that we'll somehow convince nonparticipants to join.
Whether we like it or not, people are more attracted to new, fresh, exciting, sexy than they are to the MS, RD, PhD, MD, CHES, FAWHP after the instructor's name.
Image is everything, and if a program doesn't appeal to the image clients want, all the double blind studies behind the service won't mean a thing.
2.
Respect takes time.
Employee health promotion can be pretty low on the list of valued corporate benefits (14th, just ahead of casual dress policy, in one study).
But over time, quality wellness services centered on what people want, and are ready to act on, will gain the level of respect needed for mass participation and widespread perceived value.
It's when we ignore preferences and develop programs, instead, from the position of what we think they need (based on our analysis of risk and claim data) that we fail to gain the long-term respect necessary for growth, additional funding, and appropriate staffing.
3.
We can't be all things to all people.
Most wellness programs are under-staffed and under-budgeted.
Yet many still try to offer a broad range of services and options that require twice their allotted resources.
The result is mediocre participation, delivery, and results.
In many cases, scaling back and putting more effort into promoting, ensuring value, and measuring impact are more effective.
Then, it's even more vital to do what your clients want.
4.
We can't predict the future.
Using last year's claim or healthcare cost data won't work to forecast what people will respond to in terms of wellness programming.
Tomorrow's changes at work, home, in the community, and within individuals are unknown.
We can only trust what people say is important to them today.
Without asking, testing, refining, and delivering what people care about, we may stumble upon the right formula.
But it's more likely we'll appeal to a narrow slice of the population and have limited benefit to the organization.
5.
Success can lead to bad habits -- especially if it resulted from dumb luck.
Health promoters often have no idea why something produced high participation.
For example, one health promoter we talked to recently had more than 80% of workers participate in a screening at a remote location, when the same service at other locations had produced 25%.
Assuming they'd done a better job of promoting, they staffed up for higher levels.
When participation returned to the typical 25%, they went back and interviewed participants at the 80% site and discovered a rumor had circulated: only those who went through the screening would be eligible for promotions (which makes you wonder about the 20% who didn't participate).
Don't just assume success means brilliance.
It's important to find out what worked and why, so we can replicate it.
6.
Failure is good.
At least on a small scale, it's valuable in cutting losses early, learning the reason for failure, and committing to never making the same mistake again.
7.
Hype hurts.
For years health promoters and academics touted the healthcare cost-saving virtues of wellness programs.
And we have dozens of studies to "prove" we're reducing healthcare expense.
If management buys into that argument and we fail to deliver, we're hung out to dry.
But the current emphasis on corporate health promotion's contribution to productivity calls for caution.
If we can't prove it, or at least reasonably draw rational conclusions based on what's accomplished, the hype could be based on something the services may not deliver.
Better to focus on perceived value, participation, and change in employee health behaviors than to predict influence over things that may not be controllable.
8.
Successful programs are built on trends, not fads.
Fads rise and fall in near annual cycles.
In fitness we've gone from the "exercise till you drop" phase, where we tried to make marathon runners of everyone, to the "push your vacuum around with vigor" nonsense from a surgeon general's report on physical activity.
In between is a more sustainable, rational approach that encourages people to get out and move every day, and enjoy it.
Taking time to review any wellness program against these principles is essential to success.