AIPM’s President & CEO Don Powell presented at the Corporate Wellness Conference held Oct. 26-28 in Schamburg, IL. Read on for Dr. Powell’s recap if you’re curious about how the conference went and what it was like.
At last week’s Corporate Wellness Conference, held in Schamburg, IL, I was a speaker in a session titled “How to Create a Culture of Health” along with Bruce Rogan, MD, Chief Medical Officer of the Cleveland Clinic Employee Health Plan and Dan Rigato, Employee Benefits Administration for the City of Las Vegas.
There was a great deal of interest in our topic, as over 200 people attended the session. Due to the fact that the three of us only had 50 minutes to speak, I limited my comments to only four of the 20 characteristics that I feel are important to creating a culture of health:
1) Make the program multi-component
2) Teach demand management
3) Present psych0-social issues
4) Use high-tech strategies only as an adjunct to high-touch strategies
The other 16 characteristics appear in an article I wrote for the National Wellness Institute, which you can read here.
Dr. Rogan presented the innovative program that the Cleveland Clinic has provided for their 40,000 associates. It is a multifaceted intervention with a strong emphasis on tobacco cessation. Just 11% of employees at the Cleveland Clinic are smokers, compared with the national average of 21%. There has also been a marked decrease in smoking in Cuyahoga County, within which the Cleveland Clinic is located. They also offer free fitness facilities and provide lower premiums to employees who maintain and/or improve their health. The Clinic has seen their healthcare costs increase only 2% this past year, compared to the national average of approximately 7%. Dan Rigato presented a case study of the wellness program at the City of Las Vegas.
The keynotes were as follows:
- Dr. Cecil Wilson, president of the American Medical Association, gave an informative talk on the future of health care and health care reform in America.
- John Casey, Director of International Benefits for Google, provided a keynote that described Google’s global benefits strategy, which includes a strong wellness component.
- Bill Rancic, the winner of Donald Trump’s show The Apprentice, gave a motivational speech
- Mitch Joel, a communications expert, gave a talk on digital marketing titled “Six Pixels of Separation.”
The conference also offered two sessions where attendees could receive a corporate wellness certification.
There were approximately 1000 attendees at the conference, which actually consisted of 4 different conferences in one:
- Voluntary Benefits Conference
- Corporate Wellness Conference
- Self Funding Conference
- Medical Tourism Conference
Next year, these 4 conferences will be held in Miami, Florida, October 24 – October 26. We hope to see you there.