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Arkansas Wellness Program: New Perk for State Employees

August 11, 2006

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is encouraging state employees to benefit from his personal experience. A few years ago, Huckabee was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. He took on the challenge to regain control of his health, and lost over a hundred pounds by participating in a physician-supervised weight loss program.

In an effort to share his personal gain with state employees, Governor Huckabee recently introduced “Arkansas Wellness,” an initiative designed to give state workers the same opportunity to control their weight and overall health through behavior modification techniques.

While many states offer health and wellness programs to their employees, Arkansas’ initiative is on the cutting edge, offering a proactive, online, individualized system to its participants, including online support, tools and assessments.

The six-week program can help adults lose weight, maintain a recent weight loss, or prevent weight gain associated with aging. It focuses on teaching participants to make smart decisions about nutrition, exercise, and behavior patterns. What makes this program innovative is that it is a custom program, utilizing online support, tools, and assessments.

In order to provide this new wellness program, the state partnered with Corphealth, which provides coaching, coordination and administrative services. Corphealth then subcontracted the online portion of the program to HealthMedia (r), a leading provider of online health and wellness services thorugh its HealthMedia Balance (tm) program.

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