Tanner Health System has a message for each of its more than 2,600 employees: the best way to take care of others is by first taking care of yourself.
The health system has already launched a massive media blitz of wellness-focused messaging through its “Get Healthy, Live Well” initiative. Billboards, Web ads, posts on social media, newspaper ads and more are encouraging residents to “Go for 30” minutes of exercise each day, “Go for 5” servings of fruits and vegetables each day, “Go for 0” tobacco products each day and more.
Now, the health system is pressing that message with its own employees as well.
“We’ve done a lot of work, especially in the past couple of years, to make a meaningful impact on the health of our communities,” said Loy Howard, president and CEO of Tanner Health System. “As one of the region’s largest employers, we realized we could help set an example, both by making our employees better advocates for health and hopefully by showing other companies in the area how they, too, can play a role in making west Georgia healthier.”
Health, said Howard, is something that must be considered at work as well as at home.
To drive home this point, Tanner has launched its own employee-focused effort to improve the health of its workforce. The program, Well for Life, employs registered dietitians, exercise specialists and others as health coaches, who will work one-on-one with employees and lead group classes to help employees lose weight, keep their chronic diseases in check and adopt healthier lifestyles.
Tanner has long offered employee wellness programs. Each year, the health system provides a free wellness assessment to all employees, including a cholesterol screening, blood glucose reading, body mass index check and more, providing a year-to-year comparison to how an individual employee’s health is doing. Tanner also offers employees 24-hour access to Tanner Health Source exercise facilities at its hospital campuses in Carrollton, Villa Rica and Bremen, featuring cardio and weight training equipment.
These investments have paid dividends in improved health for employees. Through the past five years, the body mass index (BMI) of Tanner’s workforce — a ratio that compares height to weight — has dropped from 35 in 2010 to 29.2 this year. And the average blood pressure reading for employees has dropped from 125/76 to 118/78.
The Well for Life program looks to continue that trend. Launched this fall at all four Tanner hospital facilities, the program features healthy prize giveaways, opportunities to enroll for health coaching sessions and more.
During the kickoff, Tanner distributed Fitbit activity tracking devices to employees throughout the organization. With the devices, which the health system purchased at a steep discount based on volume, employees will be able to keep track of their activity levels over time. Integrated software also allows employees to keep tabs on how many calories they consume, at what points in the day they tend to be most active and even how well they’re sleeping at night — or by day, for those who work the night shift.
To receive a device, employees had to pledge, among other things, that they alone would use the device — as opposed to sharing it with their children or significant others — and to strive to attain optimum health by walking 10,000 steps per day, eating more fruits and vegetables each day and more. Through the software that comes with the activity tracker, employees can participate in fitness challenges, challenge one another and check “leader boards” to see how their activity levels compare to other employees.
In the first week, more than half of the employees who’ve received the device have walked more than 93,000 miles and logged almost 422,000 “very active” minutes involved in strenuous activity.
“Tanner has become nationally recognized based on our ability to treat disease,” said Howard. “We also want to be a national leader in preventing disease. Being a leader is how you build a sustainable organization, be it in health care or any other industry.”