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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!

Transparency is extremely important to us, so we are letting you know that we may receive a commission on some of links you click on from this page. See our disclaimer.

Got a Minute? Actually, Two. Because if you can spare two minutes, you may want to use them on walking breaks. They add up.

The Journal of the American Heart Association recently ran a study titled “Moderate‐to‐Vigorous Physical Activity and All‐Cause Mortality: Do Bouts Matter?” It's findings are useful for well-run workplace wellness programs that seek new ways to encourage movement — and anyone who feels stuck at a desk with no opportunity for exercise.

The authors note: “The 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommends that adults accumulate at least 150 min/wk of moderate or 75 min/wk of vigorous‐intensity physical activity for substantial health benefits. The guidelines also direct that activity be performed in bouts of at least 10 minutes. The 10‐minute bout criterion originated in 1995 and was intended to provide flexibility in achieving the recommended dose.”

Could less time — with frequency — also provide benefits? Details:

  • “This study examines whether moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity needs to be accumulated in bouts to provide mortality benefits.”

  • “Accelerometer‐measured physical activity data collected in 2003–2006 from a representative sample of US adults (n=4840) were classified as being accumulated sporadically or in bouts and linked to mortality records available through 2011.”

  • “Sporadic and bouted moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity was similarly and strongly associated with mortality risk.”

  • “Mortality risk reductions associated with moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity are independent of how activity is accumulated.”

And the study notes the clinical implications:

  • “This finding can inform future physical activity guidelines and guide clinical practice when advising individuals about the benefits of physical activity.”

  • “The key message based on the results presented is that total physical activity (ie, of any bout duration) provides important health benefits.”

  • “Practitioners can promote either long single or multiple shorter bouts of activity in advising adults how to progress toward 150 min/wk of moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity.”

  • “This flexibility may be particularly valuable for individuals who are among the least active and likely at greater risk for developing chronic conditions.”

 

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