Texas AHEC East Selects LoneStart Wellness to Serve 111 County Service Area

LoneStart Wellness is the leading behavioral workplace wellness solution that helps reduce health care costs and increase employee engagement through a low risk, high return teambuilding approach to wellness.
 
Oct. 21, 2011 - PRLog -- S. Jay Seifert, co-founder of LoneStart Wellness announces that Texas AHEC East has joined forces with LoneStart Wellness to offer all private and public sector employers within its 111 county service area a proven, proactive wellness strategy. In response to demand for a sustainable workplace wellness solution, through Texas AHEC East LoneStart Wellness will be available to all interested worksites, organizations and employers to enhance awareness, encourage realistic behavior change and create an environment that supports and promotes a new and sustainable culture of wellness.

“We selected LoneStart Wellness as our collaborative partner because they employ a “hands-on, high-touch” established behavioral strategy that has been successfully implemented since 2005,” says Steve R. Shelton, Texas AHEC (Area Health Education Center) East Program Director.  By focusing on processes rather than outcomes, carefully managing expectations and providing an opportunity that is positive and non-judgmental, the LoneStart Wellness Team Esteem Challenge creates an environment that fosters well-being so healthier behaviors can be learned, shared, adopted and sustained.

Seifert points out that employers now know employee wellness is an issue that can no longer be ignored or deferred.  The average employee has at least 2 risk factors linked to increased health care costs, decreased productivity and increased absenteeism. Together these health risks cost the average employer an additional $3,000 to $4,000 annually. An effective, sustainable wellness program that promotes healthy behavior choices and behavior change has been shown to cut these risks in half, eliminating some entirely.

It has been established that just a one-point reduction in Body Mass Index (BMI) equates to an annual savings of $202.30 in employee health claims and pharmaceutical costs—and this excludes the savings employers see from increased productivity, morale and retention, and decreased absenteeism, presenteeism and workers’ compensation. Yet reducing just one health risk in the workplace increases productivity by 9 percent and decreases absenteeism by 2 percent. “These numbers equate to big ROI savings for employers,” says Seifert. “Wellness is an investment, not an expense.”

Since 2005, participants in the LoneStart Wellness Team Esteem Challenge have reduced their BMI by an average of at least 1.8 points in just the initial 63 days of their challenge.  This equates to an annual savings of more than $364, which for an employer, more than covers those employees’ program costs—without factoring in absenteeism and presenteeism savings to the company.

About Texas AHEC East-- Texas AHEC (Area Health Education Centers) East is a health workforce program whose mission is to enhance access to quality health care, particularly primary and preventive care in the 111 counties it serves in East Texas.  One of the organization’s core responsibilities is to promote healthy behaviors through diverse programs tailored to meet the needs of the communities it serves.

About LoneStart Wellness--LoneStart Wellness is the leading behavioral workplace wellness solution that helps reduce healthcare costs and increase employee engagement through a low risk – high return teambuilding approach to wellness. By successfully engaging employees, and keeping them engaged in the process of making healthy lifestyle choices, LoneStart Wellness is able to affect sustainable behavior change regarding the two main causes of preventable chronic illness—poor dietary practices and physical inactivity.

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More than ever before, today's employers understand that containing employee health care costs is an issue that can no longer be ignored or deferred. Employee wellness is the new business imperative.

LoneStart Wellness offers a behavioral solution to our country’s epidemic of overweight, obesity and physical inactivity, for the workplace, community groups and all organizations. When each of us begins to take responsibility for our own personal health and wellness, we will begin to address the epidemic of chronic illness and our out of control health care costs.
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