Everyday life is full of events and happenings that are beyond our control. But there is one thing that only we can control: our thought. When a thought is planted in the mind, energy is released, creating actions such as spirituality and health promotion behaviors.

How to start spirituality and health promotion behaviors?

The first step to being spiritual and healthy is to practise focusing on good thoughts so that they create positive energy for us. All thoughts are connected and one good thought will lead to the next. So we begin our journey to spirituality and health by being mindful of the things we do.

How can we be mindful?

We can all be a little more mindful if we simply practise taking a pause in everything we do. Pause for a split second before you speak. Breathe in before you type. Close your eyes for a moment after the first sip of coffee in the morning. Smell your apple before you take your first bite. It is in these in-between space that spiritual life can be found.

Practise pausing can enrich your spiritual life because a pause is a gentle reminder that there are many aspects to life. Work is only one part of your life. Besides Work, we have Family, Friends, Love, Study, Leisure and Spirituality. When you are upset over one area of your life, you can immediately restore your inner peace by putting your problem in perspective. A seemingly big problem becomes smaller when it is places in a larger scheme of life.

Middle Managers: The Overlooked Worksite Health Promotion Ally

According to a 2007 American Journal of Health Promotion article, "Manager Beliefs Regarding Worksite Health Promotion: Findings from the Working Healthy Project 2," managers at all levels in companies with existing corporate wellness programs rated the benefits of having employee health promotion lower than managers whose companies didn't yet have such programs.

This is unfortunate because managers, especially middle managers, are much more than permission givers who encourage employees to attend more classes. They can be valuable allies... or program saboteurs. Corporate wellness professionals must pay attention to these managers and cultivate a strong working relationship. A supportive and engaged manager creates the conditions within their work group to make and sustain lifestyle changes.

Managers' attitudes toward wellness generally fall into 1 of 5 categories:

1. Active enthusiasts

2. Passive enthusiasts

3. Neutral

4. Inactive opponents

5. Active opponents

Moving any of them up even 1 level toward being a champion will reap huge benefits for the program.

Most managers are inclined to back the wellness program, but remain inactive in showing their support. By helping managers understand and develop the skills to carry out their responsibilities, they will feel more comfortable with their roles. At that point, once managers have meaningful opportunities to participate that are within their responsibilities, they'll pick up the ball and run with it.

Clearly lay out the vision for the organizational wellness program. Explore the role wellness played in the company's past. Every company has a unique history -- how did employees pull together, overcome obstacles, and help one another to get the company where it is today? Presenting the wellness program vision to managers within a historical context links it to what the company is about.

For instance, company safety programs have a long history of keeping employees healthier through such initiatives as addressing alcohol, ergonomic, or sleep issues. Refer to the successes of the safety program and build on that history. If the organization has a longstanding commitment to being a good corporate citizen within the community, carry this history forward by promoting employee health and wellness.

Find the roots of the program in the past and tie it to the future. Then focus managers on creating workplace conditions for wellness program success and positive lifestyle choices.

The key to organizational wellness program success will be social... peer relationships, friendships, environmental norms. The Framingham study has shown the importance of friendships. After tracking an entire population over many years, they've discovered that people change health behaviors in clusters rather than individually.

Inform managers of key responsibilities within the workplace that influence sustained culture change, such as:

· Rewards and recognition -- Offer praise, increased autonomy, access to needed resources, first choice on job tasks

· Confrontation -- Ensure adherence to health-related policies while avoiding personal body language or facial expressions that imply disapproval or annoyance related to employee participation in programs

· Recruitment and selection -- Build department reputation as a supportive environment for health-oriented people and positive health behaviors

· Orientation -- Include information about policies and activities supporting health in employee orientations

· Training -- Identify and correct areas in the culture that present the biggest lifestyle challenges

· Communication -- Distribute information about work teams achieving employee health and wellness goals

· Traditions and symbols -- Create periodic traditions and symbolic activities that clearly demonstrate the importance of health within the culture

· Relationship development -- Support healthy activities for employees and their families, using strategies to move the unhealthy ones toward healthier alternatives and a culture of wellness

· Resource commitment -- Advocate on behalf of the worksite health promotion program with senior management for time, space, equipment, and other resources needed to pursue wellness practices.

Dean Witherspoon, CEO and founder of worksite wellness firm, Health Enhancement Systems, has 25 years in health promotion. He has served on the board of the Association for Worksite Health Promotion and held several regional as well as state offices. Dean is a nationally known speaker and author, having presented at more than 70 conferences and written hundreds of worksite wellness articles for national publications.

Worksite Health Promotion: A Global Perspective

When Dr. Robert Karch first developed what is now the American University's Master's of Science Program in Health Promotion Management in the late 1970s, the curriculum was built almost exclusively on how worksite health promotion and community initiatives were practiced in the US. But some very progressive initiatives were taking place outside our borders, while other countries were struggling with issues someone else had already solved.

A Global Health Promotion Network

In 1996, with the help of about 30 people from 18 countries, the International Institute for Health Promotion (IIHP) was formed. It has grown to about 80 institutions with a network of hundreds of people around the world. Their goal is to foster information sharing and collaboration among international academics, industry, governments, foundations, and other professional thought leaders in health promotion.

When asked which countries took the lead, Dr. Karch says, "Canada was extremely progressive in the mid-'70s through the early-'80s. Some of their early work was way ahead of the US and served as a model for other countries. But they approached it more from a public health perspective and less as a worksite health promotion initiative."

Countries like Japan and Brazil have required annual physicals as part of their employee health programs for many years. As a result, they gathered valuable information about the health status of their workforce and developed strong workplace wellness programs. While other countries -- such as Germany, the UK, France, and Singapore -- also have strong programs, most are primarily driven by the private sector.

An increasingly globalized economy explains the growing international interest in wellness. The US is clearly the leader when it comes to worksite health promotion. Though credit goes to the private sector, the government may become more involved in the near future. Subsidiaries of many US-based corporations now operate in other countries, and management wants to implement initiatives they've seen in America. As these companies move people to other countries, employee wellness concepts go with them. Academics visit the US to attend conferences and take ideas back to organizations in their countries.

Undeniable ROI

The international community is becoming increasingly aware that healthy workers represent a real return on investment. Government officials and corporate decision makers hear about successful workplace wellness programs through the international activities of organizations like the IIHP. They read about the growing body of evidence through the Internet and the broader distribution of professional employee health periodicals. Average citizens hear about these benefits on TV and radio and want such services for themselves and their families.

As US companies establish overseas operations, host governments respond to demands for enhanced services. Even emerging countries may offer programs and service opportunities; American companies need to learn where to look and how to ask.

This exposure to employee wellness concepts hasn't been a one-way street, as other countries had lessons to teach American companies. In the early days of the automobile industry, corporate wellness programs were primarily an executive perk. Unions began demanding similar services. Japan has provided their manufacturers with corporate health promotion services for years. When a large Japanese auto maker set up a plant in Lexington KY, it built a community wellness center, not just for management and their employees, but for the families and community. This model and similar experiences led other progressive companies to follow suit.

Features of Top-Notch Programs

Because they have deeper pockets to fund more comprehensive programs, international companies with the best worksite wellness practices are often larger corporations.

They seem to share certain common features:

    Clear commitment starting at the very top
    Adherence to internationally recognized quality management principles
    Progressive Internet digital and video communication systems
    Technologies that convert wellness messages into other languages
    Quality professional staff placed in major international locations
    Incentives built into management practices to meet corporate wellness goals
    A strategic plan to deliver culturally appropriate programs in foreign settings.

According to Dr. Karch, one characteristic of overseas corporations sets them apart from the US. Many international professionals Dr. Karch meets are highly trained physicians who refuse to be satisfied with old wellness programming models. "While it's easy to get set in our ways and resist change, these decision makers want only the very best and latest models. They spend time in the States and see the best practices. When they go back home, they take what they've learned here and make it fresher... better. They create new wellness campaigns, develop innovative policies, and build healthier environments from scratch. Overseas companies constantly push the envelope."

Challenges Ahead

Dr. Karch admits there are still challenges. "Just as no company can be competitive without a strong, healthy workforce, neither can a country. The worker is the economic engine that drives any country. Chronic disease states are universal. Every country faces this problem. Part of the solution is lifestyle. What better place to deliver healthy messages to the greatest numbers than in the workplace?"

For many years, companies in countries with a more socialized medical delivery system failed to recognize the benefits employee health promotion brought to their bottom line. From an insurance perspective, they had little to gain. The increasing use of tax breaks and tax incentives are getting employers' attention. Growing emphasis on productivity, presenteeism, and workplace safety are motivating corporations to provide environments that promote a healthy workforce.

Corporations operating overseas should seek out employee health resources available in their host countries. This is especially true for smaller companies with limited internal resources. And it's not just a question of providing employee health services for American workers. There is also the challenge of designing programs compatible with the culture and traditions of their foreign workers. The IIHP has established Regional Centers to bring the collective resources of their membership to regions worldwide including Europe, China, and South America. Others are being developed.

Breakthrough Health Promotion - Think Inside the Box

Once or twice a year we'll get a request to help brainstorm a new health promotion service or product. It's flattering to be thought of as a creative wellness provider and we relish the opportunity. But on most occasions, the request is difficult (if not impossible) to satisfy because the individual is looking for something "completely new and different." The problem is there really isn't such a thing -- in wellness or any other industry.

If you look at some of the hottest businesses today, none started with something completely new or different; they all were take-offs of existing technology/services or combinations of existing products/services. Consider:

    Apple. The ubiquitous iPod wasn't the first MP3 player on the market, but it was a radically improved version that, when combined with iTunes (also not the first online music store), caused the digital music market to explode.
    Google. A relatively late entry into web search, the founders didn't even set out to develop a search engine, but discovered what they'd built for a graduate school project was a better search tool than what existed to that point. And Google really didn't take off until they applied an existing advertising model (pay per click) to their search algorithms to produce highly targeted advertising.
    NetFlix. NetFlix took 2 relatively old concepts -- movie rental and mail order -- then combined them with exceptional customer service and a superior website to dominate their niche market.
    Starbucks. Howard Schultz didn't invent coffee or community, but Starbucks transformed the delivery of caffeine to the bloodstream by combining these to dramatically boost coffee consumption worldwide.

The lesson in each example is that great business concepts -- and similarly great wellness ideas -- aren't necessarily new or different. In fact, they are far more likely to be combinations of or enhancements to existing, even ordinary ideas.

Producing Breakthroughs

You don't need to come up with something that's never been tried before. Take what works and combine them in new ways -- enhancing products or services and looking for new applications of current resources.

For the next great wellness innovation, forget about creating something new and different. Instead, think inside the box of your existing wellness tools, using these questions to stimulate breakthrough thinking:

    Which participants use your services in the most unusual (and unexpected) way? What can you learn from them that could be transferred to the larger population? How can you take that unusual use and mass produce it?
    Who are your wellness "groupies" -- those who use a greater share of your services than most -- and why? What needs are you meeting for them that could be transferred to other population subsets?
    What product or service produced unexpected success in the last year? What was it that brought in bigger numbers or new participants? Was it the topic, marketing, delivery? How can you replicate that in other areas?
    What is it about your wellness program that presents the greatest obstacle to participation? What causes people to just say "oh, never mind"? Is it a lengthy assessment, inconvenient time or location, difficulty in finding a resource or a real person? Sometimes the easiest breakthrough is identifying the biggest hassle and removing it.
    Who is the most underserved segment of your population? Why? What can you do to make it easier, more convenient, valuable, more interesting, or appealing to them?
    If you had an unlimited budget, what are the top 3 things you would do? (Okay, no one has an unlimited budget, so pick the priority you can do and get going. Once you show success with that version, then make a pitch for the money to upgrade next year.)

Innovation is more about awareness than it is about wild, out-of-the box thinking. Use these ideas to stimulate thinking inside the box for wellness program breakthroughs in 2012.

Dean Witherspoon, CEO and founder of employee wellness firm, Health Enhancement Systems, has 25 years in health promotion. He has served on the board of the Association for Worksite Health Promotion and held several regional as well as state offices. Dean is a nationally known speaker and author, having presented at more than 70 conferences and written hundreds of employee wellness articles for national publications.

Why Employee Wellness Works: The Link to Anti-Aging and Health Promotion

In the early days of health promotion, many recommendations (including those in employee wellness programs) grew from years of simply watching people and noticing links between lifestyle and what ultimately made them sick. Observation showed that those who smoked, abused alcohol, didn't exercise, and ate mostly junk food often suffered from illnesses, such as heart disease, strokes, cancers, and diabetes. People who exercised, ate lots of fruits, veggies, grains, and lean meats, and managed life stresses tended to live longer and experienced fewer diseases or conditions associated with old age.

What wasn't known (then) was why this was true; there were theories but surprisingly little hard science. As a result, many people, including some in the medical profession, were slow to embrace employee wellness programs and recommendations.

The Mystery Revealed

As time went by, skepticism waned. Scientific research began proving what those in the employee wellness industry knew intuitively: lifestyle choices have impact... huge impact. Anti-aging medicine is one of the resulting specialized fields -- a relative newcomer focused on any activity that slows, prevents, or even reverses aging.

Who hasn't attended a high school reunion and been surrounded by classmates -- all the same age, yet some look old enough to be their friends' parents. Others seem to have barely aged since graduation. How can people age so differently? That question lies at the heart of this research.

To understand "anti"-aging, it's necessary to understand aging. Obviously, it can be defined in terms of growing older, when abilities begin to decline and battles with disease and poor health become more common. How quickly (or slowly) those changes occur depends on a combination of genes, environment, and lifestyle. Anti-aging medicine seeks to modify these factors in our favor.

Hormones as Defense

Among the most potent weapons in today's anti-aging arsenal are hormones. Basically, they're chemicals released by cells in one part of the body that affect what cells do in other parts of the body. Cells responding to a hormone's "message" do so because they produce a specific molecule (or receptor) on their surface. Think of these "receptors" as a lock on the cell door. Only the right hormone has the key to unlock the door and deliver its message. All other hormones will be rejected by the cell. There are a great many hormones -- and each has a different message to deliver.

It's generally believed that hormone levels decrease with age. Insufficient quantities of a hormone mean target cells don't receive instructions to do their jobs. This leads to disease and premature aging.

The question now being asked is how much does lifestyle affect the extent of this hormone decline? We do know that when an aging body's hormones are brought back to more youthful levels, there is a powerful rejuvenating effect. The person feels, acts, and looks younger.

While these potent (and often expensive) hormones can be replaced artificially by an appropriately certified physician, that is not the purpose of this article. Instead, let's focus on how to naturally increase production of important hormones through the healthier lifestyles advocated in a typical employee wellness program.

Increasing Hormones Naturally

One of the most important hormones is Human Growth Hormone (HGH). Originally known for helping children grow tall, for many years it was thought that HGH had no real benefits to fully grown humans. However, anti-aging research reveals that maintaining youthful HGH levels does have proven benefits for aging adults:

    Healthier and younger looking skin
    Faster healing and reduced infections after injury or surgery
    Decreased total body fat
    Increased lean muscle mass and bone mineral density
    Improved cholesterol blood levels
    Enhanced libido
    More stamina and endurance during exercise
    Quicker recovery time between workouts
    Better mood, coping skills, and overall well-being
    Higher energy levels.

Other hormones support HGH in slowing the aging process. Some additional benefits of this hormone team are to enhance brain function, reduce risks for cardiovascular disease, and improve immunity.

Look again at the above list. When people complain about the more common negative signs of aging, the symptoms they often describe are the symptoms of low levels of HGH and supporting hormones. Logically, raising these hormones should help improve signs of early aging.

While many lifestyle issues fall under the umbrella of wellness, most worksite health promotion professionals agree physical activity, avoiding tobacco and other risky substances, stress management, proper nutrition, and maintaining an ideal weight are basic components of any employee wellness program.

Here's where it gets exciting. Look at the impact these lifestyle choices have on HGH levels:

    Fitness -- regular aerobic and anaerobic activity stimulates HGH production
    Smoking, drug abuse, and overuse of alcohol -- slow HGH production
    High-quality nutritious foods and not overeating -- enhance HGH production
    Stress -- chronic unrelieved stress slows HGH production
    Sleep -- sufficient good sleep encourages HGH production
    Obesity -- slows HGH production; when HGH levels are raised, weight loss efforts are more successful.

Get the picture? Healthy lifestyles help keep HGH levels up and poor lifestyles decrease HGH levels. By adopting positive behaviors that help the body produce ideal amounts of HGH on its own, we can slow the aging process. Imagine sharing that message with employees who think they've heard it all in corporate wellness programs.

Health Ahead

But employee wellness programs shouldn't stop there. Once employee wellness audiences have a plan for staying healthy and vital, help them explore what they will do with those vibrant golden years. Studies of healthy, happy seniors show a direct link between positive attitudes and aging. Some examples:

    Don't obsess over the little things
    Laugh off the occasional "senior moment"
    Don't allow regrets to rule your life
    Learn from mistakes if you can, but ultimately, just move on
    Preserve a youthful sense of curiosity and wonder and you can preserve your youth as well.

Life is about growing and changing. We should spend our lives having the time of our lives.

Dean Witherspoon, CEO and founder of wellness firm, Health Enhancement Systems, has 25 years in employee wellness promotion. He has served on the board of the Association for Worksite Health Promotion and held several regional as well as state offices. Dean is a nationally known speaker and author, having presented at more than 70 conferences and written hundreds of employee wellness articles for national publications.

Corporate Health Promotion Has 3 Years to Get It Right

In comments before the 2009 Annual Art and Science of Health Promotion Conference, Michael O'Donnell, PhD, MPH, MBA (Editor in Chief, American Journal of Health Promotion) described rapid changes in this field and what it meant to practitioners. "Despite 4 decades of corporate health promotion as a profession, there is still no consensus as to the most effective and efficient way to render services. We have only about 3 years to get it right."

Michael offers examples: "In smoking cessation, we have good science to guide us. We know that counseling therapy or nicotine replacement medication typically yields a 10% success rate. But when we combine counseling and nicotine replacement, the rate goes up to 30%. We also know when you increase the number of minutes of counseling, you increase success rates; but at 300 minutes we reach a plateau. Involving different types of people in counseling sessions also increases the likelihood of positive outcomes. By applying these scientific principles, we multiply our success 6-fold. Yet in something like weight control, beyond knowing people need to eat less and exercise more, we have very little knowledge of what works."

Strongly believing the industry needs to dedicate itself to studying what works in health promotion, he was actively involved in promoting Senate bill (S.1001/HR2354). Called the Health Promotion FIRST (Funding Integrated Research Synthesis and Training) Act, many provisions became law when President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and began going into effect in 2010. The bill included additional health promotion provisions and enjoyed bipartisan support. Highlights include:

    Development of a national health promotion plan
    Increased health promotion research
    Technical assistance to enhance evaluation of worksite health promotion programs
    Regular surveys on worksite health program prevalence and components
    Grants to pay part of the cost for comprehensive worksite health promotion programs in small organizations
    Allowing employers to offer employees an insurance premium discount of up to 30% (instead of the current 20%) for positive lifestyle practices or participation in worksite health promotion programs and asking Health and Human Services to study the benefits of increasing to 50%.

Focus on What Works Best

Michael challenges practitioners to focus more on what works best in their area of expertise. "What are the most cost-effective ways to reach the greatest number of people with the most hard-hitting programs to improve their lifestyle? I realize this is difficult for individual employee health and wellness practitioners. They may have great intuition and ability to assess a person or organization, and they may develop very effective interventions to encourage change. But when you ask them why they are successful, they can't articulate the core principles critical to their success. This has been a classic problem in our field."

"I realize that practitioners dedicate a great deal of time and effort to figure out the most useful strategies for each individual and organization they serve. Unfortunately, this approach is not practical if we want to reach most employees in most workplaces. When you build cars one by one, it's not so hard to get it right. But when you build an assembly line and crank cars out at a high volume, you need to be sure the best procedures are in place to make it work. As we scale up our wellness programs, we need to draw on standardized protocols that can be tailored to the special needs of each situation."

"Practitioners need to look for opportunities to team up with the scientific community and help them develop good theories as to what works best. Learn to articulate why what you do works. We need to network and share more with people. We must test programs that have been shown to be successful and find out why they work. We don't do that nearly enough."

"Time is running out for us to get it right. The industry is growing very fast. For a while purchasers entering the market will not know the questions to ask. It will be relatively easy to sell wellness programs. But eventually purchasers will become more sophisticated and require higher levels of quality proof. As more products become available, they will push down on the price. And when they do, we must make sure these commodities offer the best possible solutions to change lives."

Growing Our Future Leaders

To meet this growth in the health promotion industry requires energetic and forward-thinking leadership. Michael is concerned that in a few years, there may be a problem finding those leaders. "For the most part, today's wellness program leaders are in their 50s. When this group entered the field in their 20s, it was a new industry with many leadership opportunities. The youngest and brightest out of grad school moved into leadership positions quickly. Unfortunately, the pool of emerging leaders to replace us is small. In the 1990s the field experienced an economic downturn. Many of the new cohort of professionals were forced to move into other lines of work to survive. These would have been the professionals to eventually fill future leadership positions, and it was a small group to begin with. I often hear managers say it's difficult to find qualified people with 15-20 years experience."

Michael expresses concerned about the consequences of this looming leadership vacuum. "If new leaders don't come from within our field, they will come from outside the field. It's wonderful to gain new perspectives, but will they have the same philosophical value we have to help people? I worry that they will be oriented more toward medical healthcare cost containment and making money. What has been unique about our field is the focus on quality of life. That is a value we must preserve. We need to continue this dialogue on growing our future leaders."

"Don't get me wrong; talent must prevail. We don't want to coddle people or they won't be able to stand the pressure of a leadership position. It's got to be survival of the fittest, and emerging leaders need to challenge existing leaders for control. Cultivate the qualities in yourself and others that you expect to see in any leader. Create a vision and put a plan in place to achieve that vision."

What if We Don't Get It Right?

When asked about the consequences of not getting it right, Michael predicts, "We have a golden opportunity right now. The Obama administration and Congress are very interested in wellness and prevention. Prevention is the only thing that is not controversial. Congress believes prevention is the magic bullet to fix healthcare. But if we don't develop programs that produce consistent positive outcomes, we'll be in trouble. We have less than 3 years to get it right or we will lose the credibility we've worked so hard to achieve. If that happens, government and employers will shrug their shoulders and say, 'We tried, but it didn't work.'"

And Michael isn't sure who (or what) will fill the vacuum if it doesn't work. "It's kind of like managed care. In the original closed panel approaches developed by two of the larger HMOs, managed care produced better health outcomes at lower prices. This mutated into PPO approaches which are basically bulk purchasing arrangements that lack internal quality or cost controls. Managed care got a bad name. I think something similar could happen to worksite health promotion if we don't take action now."

Dean Witherspoon, CEO and founder of employee wellness firm, Health Enhancement Systems, has 25 years in health promotion. He has served on the board of the Association for Worksite Health Promotion and held several regional as well as state offices. Dean is a nationally known speaker and author, having presented at more than 70 conferences and written hundreds of employee wellness articles for national publications.

How to Have a Winning Health Promotion Internship Program

While we generally think about internships as a learning opportunity with advantages for students, budget cuts paired with a tough economy have increased the benefit of capable, entry level workers to employers and schools. The health promotion field is a great match for this type of win-win-win relationship:

    Wellness departments are often understaffed and underfunded these days
    Students need real-life experience to complete their educational development
    Colleges/universities gain important interaction with businesses and communities.

Regardless of format, all experiential learning activities -- such as internships, practicums, field experiences, cooperative education, apprenticeships, and service learning -- have common attributes.

UWSP Reflections

The University of Wisconsin Stevens Point School of Health Promotion and Human Development meets these objectives in their internship and field study program. Students not only work directly for the UWSP employee wellness program but also contribute and gain experience in the surrounding community/state as well as nationally through internships and field work. Examples follow:

    UWSP health promotion students organize and run the annual campus breast cancer walk to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
    Practicum students on campus write the UWSP employee wellness letter, do onsite blood pressure checks at several University buildings, and serve as coaches/personal trainers for employees who opt into these add-on programs.
    UWSP students are wellness coaches for participants in the Community Weight Race (sponsored by Ministry of Health Care), fitness trainers at Sentry Insurance's onsite facility, and organizers of the employee health fair at Del Monte foods... just to name a few community activities.
    Nationally, interns from UWSP have filled various roles at NASA, The White House, and Kimberly-Clark.

Laying the Groundwork for Success

Worksites

To be successful for the worksite, internships should provide:

    Valuable work hours and services to alleviate limited budgets and staffing
    A fresh, new perspective on achieving employer goals based on the knowledge and skills students have gained through their formal training
    A way to help manage workflow, recruit potential new talent, and increase productivity of current staff by delegating tasks to interns.

Students

Reflecting on the UWSP program, to be successful for students, internships should provide:

    A chance to learn and develop skills through active participation in a real-world context with practical application of academic content and theory
    Circumstances to apply classroom knowledge to possible career work environments through on-the-job training
    Encouragement for critical thinking and problem solving using what they're learning in school -- to not only gain valuable skills, but also valuable networking opportunities.

The key is active involvement of the students. They must be part of shaping the process they will follow -- guided by the concepts of their coursework, along with their own personal knowledge and experiences. This active learning is a crucial part of student development, as are collaboration, feedback, practical applications, reflection, and cognition. These outcomes can be in an interdisciplinary setting and, most important for health promotion students, while leading health-related activities. For instance, interns can perform needs assessments and then plan, implement, and evaluate health promotion programs designed to meet those needs.

Colleges/Universities

To be successful for the college/university, internships should provide:

    A way to integrate diverse learning styles and make learning more relevant for students
    The optimum opportunity for students to enter their chosen professions or fulfill career goals upon graduation
    Interaction with businesses and communities to meet a competitive necessity.

Incorporating these factors can make internships successful for all parties involved.

Dean Witherspoon, President and founder of employee wellness firm, Health Enhancement Systems, has 25 years in health promotion. He has served on the board of the Association for Worksite Health Promotion and held several regional as well as state offices. Dean is a nationally known speaker and author, having presented at more than 70 conferences and written hundreds of employee wellness articles for national publications.

Health Promotion Program - Benefits of Health Promotion in the Work Environment

Benefits of health promotion are not only for the workplace of a company it also touches the interest of the employees. There are various types of benefits that are transferred from the employee to their members of the family.

Teaching and supporting are the best feasible ways of communicating health tips to the employees. Already thousands of people get their health information from TV, Internet and magazines.

Benefits of Health Promotion

    Health Awareness -- Most of the employees like to follow these tips for the benefit of working together. Some of the areas of health awareness are such as awareness concerning alcohol and tobacco, recreation, fitness, nutrition, heart health, urology problem, diabetics etc. Also workplace safety areas and workplace health promotion are very effective.
    Workplace Health Promotion -- It will lead to a general shrink of health care expenses, health maintenance, health education and other preventive measures for various diseases. These are all crucial for generating a solid institution within an association. Workplace health promotion is having the strong evidence to supports the success of wellness programs or health programs. This type of inventions is making the important difference in the managerial structure.
    Health Programs -- Most of the popular companies would like to implement the wellness programs. They are encouraging not only their employees to improve their health lifestyle but the members of family as well. Mental health programs are part of health support on the workplace. It can function as a barometer to show the state of wellbeing of the employees. This is the significant factor for mental health programs.
    Positive Working Environment -- Company employees enjoy many of these types of strategies for they reduce behavioral problems and suicide rates. Stress management classes and/or mental health programs have resulted in a decrease of domestic aggressions due to a positive working environment for the employees. On social level there is an important reduction of child abuse and also spousal abuse.

Generally the safety and health promotion or occasional health both help to reduce the number of disabilities and deaths at the workplace. Safety and health issue of employees are part of their workplace environment therefore wellness programs and common health promotion occurs in the work environment. Training workers while implementing wellness and safety procedures results in a significant decrease of injuries. As job injuries reduce, workers asking for a compensation claim reduce. To conclude workplace health promotion is an excellent tool for the company to show the employees that their health is the most important to the organization.

What Does Health Promotion Mean?

Health promotion is a slightly stuffy term in one sense in that it is normally used by official bodies, governments and academic experts to talk about a wide range of social activities and behaviours that collectively have a big impact on an individual's health and sense of well-being.

The most common and obvious examples relate to issues such as smoking, drinking, gambling and diet, as well as a range of social conditions such as housing, poverty and unemployment, all of which have an impact on determining levels of health.Whilst these areas of health promotion are important and valid, they tend to be areas that have a huge amount of research done into the in order to produce evidenced-based processes of solutions to public health issues.

Whilst this is an important area for many people, there is another aspect to health promotion which actually has much more of an impact in some ways, which is the way an individual promotes their own health and well-being on a daily basis.This invariably raises the question of what is health and what is not health and what is health promotion and what is not health promotion.

The notion of health has a number of standard academic definitions, the majority of which are fairly meaningless in that they are so broad and generalised that they can mean pretty much what anyone wants them to mean. The nature of health to an individual tends to be something that they take for granted until in some way they are alerted that they could have a problem.

Such a problem could well be of a physical or emotional nature or could relate to a close family member or friend or could relate to a change in circumstances such as bereavement, moving home or losing a job. All these areas have an impact on the nature of health in terms of physical symptoms, emotional stability and a general sense of well-being.

The circumstances of life tend to challenge and question a person's core sense of self, how much of a belief they have themselves and capability of running their own life, and their ability to deal with the challenges that invariably arise from these areas. An individual's sense of health promotion may not be a conscious process, but can be enhanced considerably by healthy levels of emotional and social support in terms of family and environment.

The healthiest form of promotion in terms of an individual's health care relates to their own internal locus of control in many ways. Other health prevention areas such as diet/exercise which are well known, will to a large extent depend on how much an individual values their own well-being and is willing to undertake these other areas as a result. Having knowledge of one's own health is important, but more important is the level of motivation behind it.