The value and evaluation of a wellness program

This paper is important to public health practice as it will review the most important literature ion the field of productivityion and health, discussing important aspects about workplace wellness programs. The study was performednecessary to evaluate the workplaces wellness program of the Texas Medical Center, Inc. Corporation, and even though theis evaluation report will noon’t be part of this paper, I will discuss briefly my work to exemplify the steps involved in the evaluation of a wellness program.Workplace wellness programs have the potential to benefit the life of workers and business by attracting and retaining good workers, reducing absenteeism and presenteeism, improving employee morale and reducing organizational conflict (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 2001). Managing employee’s health with the help of workplace wellness programs shows improvement of the employee’s productivity and increase in profitability for the organizations. These trends are expanding the interest in worksite wellness programs and explain how new terms like “Return-on-Investment” and others (see Preface) have been created to describe the effects of worksite health programs on positive achievements for workers and their worksites (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 2001). Developing workplace wellness programs requires the mobilization of financial and human resources needed to accomplish its important health promotion interventions. The processes of planning, implementing and evaluating a wellness program secure that these resources are spent in the most broad and efficient manner. Measuring the effects of worksite wellness programs is a difficult task to do, nevertheless, a body of research is already showing the impact of wellness programs in the lives of workers and their families. Wellness programs are opening the workplace to important public health interventions and this new place might become a very important front for organized health promotion activities. This paper will describe some of the wellness programs components and characteristics, will discuss the effects of workplace wellness programs in business and public health and the importance of their evaluation. It will also give pointers on how to start an evaluation and will discuss the process of evaluating a wellness program using the Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health from the Centers for Disease Control nd the framework developed by the Wellness Council of America (WELCOA)