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Workplace Wellness Lab delivers leading insights, ideas and information on wellness, health management, and healthy living.

Our goal is simple: Workplace Wellness Lab provides regular and better information as an important path to create healthy individual outcomes, while helping change health care in America.

By connecting the audiences that matter – consultants, corporate executives, policymakers, thought leaders, journalists, customers, and more – we establish a positive, substantive, and influential voice within the wellness industry that makes the case that:

    • Left unchecked, current trends in health spend and outcomes are unsustainable.
    • Given that half the healthcare dollars in this country are incurred by employers, well-executed preventive care health management programs in the worksite are clearly enduring and valuable, helping drive improved workplace environments and individual outcomes.
    • Industry coherence around private sector innovation to drive effective health management programs is economically vital, given what’s possible in a spend category that is arguably one of the greatest challenges in America today.

Workplace Wellness Lab comes at this challenge principally from the employer point of view: What are the credible and demonstrated best practices in preventive care to structure programs that have an enduring impact? How can the impact be made explicit, as something that is both the right thing to do and a proactive business initiative that lowers the cost of care, as experienced by both employers and employees?

And Workplace Wellness Lab goes beyond the workplace. It’s a robust platform filled with ideas and insights from those that influence how employers think about this opportunity: research organizations, non-profits, think tanks and more.

From an editorial point of view, great ideas can come from anywhere. With that philosophy in mind, we will combine our own original content with other content across the web. We organize the content, with a view to making it as simple and useful as possible.

All content will be sourced. If we found it somewhere, we’ll tell you where we got — and how to get to that site yourself.

We also welcome your comments — criticisms, ideas, and, yes, we take compliments, too! Have a thought of what you’d like to see — or see something you think others should know — drop us a line.

Thanks for visiting – and please come back again!

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As we noted, Wednesday was Global Running Day. With the weekend here, we found a UK approach to turn that day into action and help potential runners get off the couch.

The Global Running Day site states: “Global Running Day is a worldwide celebration of running that encourages everyone to get moving. It doesn’t matter how fast you run or how far you go—what’s important is that you take part, and how you do it is up to you. Run a lap around your block, take your dog for a long walk, or call your friends for a pick-up game in the park. The important thing is that you have fun being active—and you inspire others to join you.”

The movement offers well-run workplace wellness programs a chance to inspire and engage members in fitness — either implementing an improved routine or maintaining current activities. The UK's NHS offers additional inspiration with a program they call “Couch to 5K.”

It states: “Couch to 5K is a running plan for absolute beginners. It was developed by a new runner, Josh Clark, who wanted to help his fifty-something mum get off the couch and start running, too.
The plan involves 3 runs a week, with a day of rest inbetween, and a different schedule for each of the 9 weeks.”

The program designers realize a significant challenge for individuals and leaders of workplace wellness programs — Getting started: “Probably the biggest challenge a new runner faces is not knowing how or where to start. Often when trying to get into exercise, we can overdo it, feel defeated and give up when we're just getting started.”

The NHS also outlines benefits of running (and being active generally):

  • “It's an easy way of improving your physical health.”
  • “Running regularly will improve the health of your heart and lungs. It can also help you lose weight, especially if combined with a healthy diet.”
  • “There's evidence it may help increase bone density in some people, which can help protect against bone diseases like osteoporosis.”
  • “There are also mental benefits of running. Taking on the challenge of Couch to 5K can help boost your confidence and self-belief, as you prove to yourself that you can set yourself a target and achieve a goal”.
  • “Running regularly can also be a great stress reliever and has even been shown to combat depression.”

The NHS provides a video that features Laura, who “hated sports at school” and explains how the program works:

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