Published: April 30, 2008 09:23 pm            

Wellness program paying off for Terre Haute employees

TERRE HAUTE — An employee wellness program aimed at reducing health insurance costs to the city of Terre Haute appears to be working, reducing claims 4.5 percent so far this year, said Sara Clark, risk management coordinator.

“Our insurance provider is Anthem, which has seen across-the-board 14 percent increases in their accounts, so for us to see a decrease is a really big deal. The only difference between this year and last year is the wellness program, which began last July 1. We attribute the savings to taxpayers to our wellness program,” Clark said.

Terre Haute in June 2007 signed a one-year, $108,000 contract with Fitness Experts, 811 Ohio St., for free gym memberships plus 42 hours per week of personal training plus health and fitness consultation. The company also tracks results and helps create interest in fitness, Clark said.

The city’s 545 full-time employees are eligible for the program, plus part-time employees and spouses can use the program at a discount of $20 per month, Clark said.

During the past six weeks, employees could participate in a “Biggest Loser” challenge for weight loss by percentage of body weight lost.

Twenty-six teams, each with three members, signed up, with 22 teams finishing, said Fitness Expert owner Brian Huxford. The finishing teams collectively lost 606.8 pounds, he said.

“The average American now gains one pound per year,” Huxford said. At that national trend, city employees would collectively be about 500 pounds heavier, he said, “but from this one weight loss challenge, the city is over 600 pounds lighter,” Huxford said.

Huxford said before the weight loss challenge, participating employees had lost a combined 400 plus pounds. “So in the nine months that this program has been installed, [city employees] have [collectively] lost over 1,000 pounds,” Huxford said.

The team that lost the most in the challenge was comprised of Mikael “Hank” Hensley, John Delph and Chad Sappingfield, employees in the city’s wastewater treatment department. They collectively lost 26.61 percent of their body weight, winning $200 checks from Fitness Experts.

Second-place winners were Kevin Price, Lewis Price and Daniel Smiddy from the Terre Haute Fire Department. They lost 21.99 percent of their body weight, each winning $50 checks from Fitness Experts.

Mayor Duke Bennett presented the teams with the checks earlier this week.

“There are so many benefits to losing weights and staying healthy. This is a good start and I feel like this is just getting the ball rolling,” Bennett said.

Hensley said he had weighed 227 pounds, and already had started to watch his diet. When the challenge began, he weighed 219 pounds. He lost 22.8 pounds during the challenge to get to nearly 196 pounds.

“My knees feel a lot better. My knees don’t hurt as bad,” Hensley said, adding that he “didn’t work out, maybe twice the whole time, but I just watched what I ate.”

Delph said he lost 19 pounds, going to 170 from 189 pounds. “I hit the gym five days a week in the last month” of the challenge, he said. Sappingfield also lost 19 pounds to get to 290 from 309 pounds. “I just ate a lot of fruits and vegetables,” he said.

Huxford said the goal was to have 25 percent of city employees participate in the wellness program in the first year. The city had 46 percent employee participation in the first nine months, he said.

“We are trying to build a culture of wellness,” Clark said. “We see that even though people maybe are not exercising at the gym, they are starting to exercise at fire stations or exercise in the police stations and are starting to pay attention to their diet. So slowly we are changing our paradigm that we are becoming more conscientious of health,” Clark said.



Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.

        

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