While the vast majority of companies in the United States arenow offering wellness programs, most would admit their program isfar from perfect. Figuring out how to squeeze the highest impactout of what seems like an ever-shrinking budget is one of thebiggest struggles a benefit administrator will run into whenputting together a wellness program. While most behavior change or“intervention” programs available in the wellness world are focusedon a single issue, we may have found the one focus that can impactmultiple health risks and make your dollar go the furthest.

Many wellness program decisions are made similarly to how weshop for consumer goods. Marketing and “buzz words” go a long way.Think about the difference in exposure you see between breastcancer and diabetes. During breast cancer awareness month, NFLfootball players wore pink, there were public service announcementspromoting breast cancer awareness and even the eggs in myrefrigerator had a pink ribbon stamped on them. I can’t say any ofthose things about diabetes, but diabetes related deaths outnumberbreast cancer every year by nearly five times. It’s all aboutperception and visibility.

This is the reason that, anecdotally, smoking cessation is thenumber one behavior change program that I am asked for on aday-to-day basis. Smoking is something you see with your own eyesand you know is a major driver of medical cost increases andproductivity loss in an organization. I won’t argue that point. ButI will point out that while smoking is the most “marketed” ofnegative behaviors, it may not be the best use of your limitedresources.

We live in a world of one-to-one relational interventionprograms. As I touched on, smoking cessation has a direct effect onsmoking, but not on obesity, metabolic syndrome or mental healthissues. A healthy eating program only impacts your weight. Employeeassistance programs target mental health conditions. So what is theintervention that can reach across multiple risk “categories” tohelp your employees?

While doing research on mental health issues in middle agedwomen, we stumbled across an interesting connection. What we firstdiscovered was that in a population of women between age 25 and 40,a small incremental increase in the amount of exercise they engagedin per week (measured in days in which you raise your heart ratefor 20 minutes) correlated to a drastic reduction in levels ofanxiety, depression and stress. In each analysis, the level ofthese conditions decreased with each increase in number of daysthat they exercised.

The key was that any amount of exercise was great. Incidence ofeach condition was lowered by 18 to 59 percent when exercising lessthan one time per week to one time or more. It appears that thesewomen got the most “bang for their buck” when exercising threetimes per week, lowering incidence of these conditions 29 to 57percent.

And this isn’t just an issue of women between 25 and 40 yearsold. When running the same comparison against all participants inour database, we saw a similar trend. Incidence of each conditionwas lowered by 22 to 61 percent when habits changed from exercisingless than one time per week to one time or more. The onlydifference that we noticed was that within the group of women 25 to40 years old, the incidence rate of depression and anxiety wasoverall 33 percent higher than the population as a whole.

So what could this mean for your wellness program? If you havelimited dollars to spend, activity-based programs are a wise choiceto earn first priority over other programs that may get more buzzor come to mind first. These programs work not only as an effectivemaintenance program for healthy employees, and a risk reductionprogram for participants with high blood pressure, diabetes,metabolic syndrome and obesity, but also strongly impact thereduction of mental health conditions. You’ll be able to provide amulti-faceted approach to cost containment and productivitymaximization with one simple program. So get out there and getactive.

Joe Miller is managing director for CHC Wellness. He canreached at [email protected] or847-380-1169.