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News : State Backs Fitness During Workday
RED NOVA, July 6 2005 -- Different state agencies are forming their own clubs to promote healthful lifestyles among employees.
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Instead of relegating physical fitness and good nutrition to things employees must do in their spare time, the state is undertaking to integrate healthy lifestyle habits into the workday.
"Adults spend most of their waking hours in the worksite, which makes it a key channel for health promotion and disease prevention activities," Health Department director David Gifford said in a news release announcing the "Get Fit, Rhode Island!" initiative, which Governor Carcieri and his wife, Suzanne, are co-chairing.
Each state department has already appointed a volunteer "wellness champion" who has surveyed department employees' program requests. The Department of Labor and Training has begun holding twice-weekly yoga classes, drawing employees from that department and from Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals and from Elderly Affairs. Registration for a Department of Administration yoga class filled up immediately, the release said.
Employees in the Department of Human Services are forming walking clubs that meet during the lunch hour and after work.
The departments of Health, Environmental Management and Administration will collaborate to host a farmers' market each Thursday from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., beginning July 14, on the front lawn of the Department of Administration building at One Capitol Hill.
"Research has shown that, in addition to lower health-care costs for employers and employees, employees who participate in on-site wellness programs are happier and more productive," the governor said in the release. "As an employer, we have an obligation to make it easier and more accessible for our employers to improve their health."
The state's new wellness director, Anne Marie Connolly, will coordinate the campaign, and the Department of Health will manage it.
The University of Rhode Island will provide advisers from its faculty and staff in the fields of exercise physiology, nutrition, behavior modification, nursing and health psychology.
"We are putting the expertise and the many resources of the University of Rhode Island into play to help us all live healthier lives," URI President Robert L. Carothers said.
(source : www.rednova.com)
