Wellness Library

Information to evaluate your program comes from regularly gathered screening and follow-up data of your program that look at process and outcomes of your program.

The Worker Health Program has available a computerized case-management system which includes queries that allow simple assessment of process and outcome results at any point in time.

Process Assessment

Process assessment looks at the  Company Wellness Program’s impact as seen at various points in time.

Information that is gathered from the various forms that wellness employees fill out should supply you with the following:

• How many staff members were screened?
• How many workers who were referred to a doctor went?
• How many employees who expressed interest in health improvement programs went?
• How many workers who were referred to health improvement programs went?
• How many workers who went to health improvement programs completed them?
• How many workers are in follow-up caseload?

You can use this type of process assessment to evaluate and learn about the health of your program.

Outcome Evaluation

A central goal of the program is to improve the health of workers. Information on how to judge how well your program is meeting this goal is called “outcome evaluation” because you are evaluating the end results or outcome of your program.

In wellness programs, objectives are gauged by specific (outcomes) behavior changes and reductions in health risk levels. Have employees lowered their Blood Pressure (BP)? Have they lost weight? Are they working out more? Is alcohol consumption at a safe level? By way of example these are the types of questions you can ask to discover if you are reaching your objectives:

• For employees with high Blood Pressure (BP) (140 / 90 or higher or on medication) at screening, what percentage have it under control (below 140 / 90) a year later?
• What is the modification in average Blood Pressure levels among all employees with elevated Blood Pressure 1 year after screening? Two years later?
• For workers with high blood cholesterol levels (above 240) at screening, what percentage has reduced their cholesterol to borderline-high levels (200-239)?
• For workers with borderline-elevated blood cholesterol levels, what percentages have reduced their cholesterol to the desirable range (below 200)?
• What is the modification in average cholesterol levels among all employees with high and borderline-high blood cholesterol levels 1 year after screening? Two years later?
• For workers who were overweight at assessment, what percentage have lost 20 pounds or more a year later? Ten pounds or more? What is the average weight loss?
• For employees who were smokers at screening, what percentages have quit smoking? For at least a year?
• For staff members whose level of alcohol consumption put them at-risk at assessment, what percentage have quit drinking alcohol? Are consuming alcohol at levels considered safe by CDC instructions? Have reduced their drinking, but are still at-risk?
• For employees, what percentages are working out at least three times a week for at least 20 minutes?
• If fitness levels were measured, what percentages have improved fitness?

Set a regular time such as every 6 months to look at which employees your program is reaching and how effective it is at supporting them lower their health risks. Use this information to make new decisions about how to direct your program efforts. Then make the change you need to improve your program.

Some may feel that an assessment is unnecessary; it is not. Assessment is a crucial part of a wellness program. You will need to be aware of what is working and what is not. Decision-makers who fund the program need to be updated on the effectiveness of the program. Evaluation will provide you with crucial data to maintain and expand the program and convince management to continue to support the program.

Tags: Corporate Wellness, health, medical, Wellness Library

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 3:18 am and is filed under Corporate Wellness, Wellness Library. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.