Ohio State Named Healthiest Employer!

Healthiest Employer, large company category: Ohio State University

Janet Adams | Business First

Ohio State runs the University Health Connection clinic that allows employees such as Mark Wheeler to get checked out by Dr. Stephanie Cook.

If you’re a numbers person then some figures contained within health-care data for Ohio State University may justify the institution’s approach in trying to make it “the healthiest university” on the planet.
That’s no joke, but something university officials are striving toward through the Your Plan for Health, or YP4H, that was included as a component of the school’s employee benefits plan upon its 2006 launch.
“The vision is to make the university the healthiest university just not in the nation but in the world,” said Bernadette Melnyk, the school’s associate vice president for health promotion, chief wellness officer and dean of the College of Nursing.
Ohio State says figures gleaned from the first six years of YP4H show the university is on the right track.
For example, 68 percent of OSU’s faculty and staff who receive benefits complete a physical health assessment. The wellness program’s goal is to lower health-care costs by helping staff take steps toward living healthier lifestyles. University research shows those people are more likely to seek preventive health services and likely to use lifestyle and disease management programs. They also are more likely to incur lower health-care costs.
Additionally, national employers overall have seen their total annual health-care costs rise by 52 percent since 2006. The comparative number at Ohio State is 37 percent.
The initiative at OSU offers faculty and staff enrolled in its medical plan 100 percent coverage for preventive exams and immunizations, coverage for acupuncture, medical massage, behavioral health services, nutritional services and reimbursement for participation in smoking cessation and weight management programs.

Universal culture

Melnyk tags on a few other statistics illustrating progress. Employees who received biometric screenings in 2010 – 5.7 percent of them showed elevated blood-pressure readings and 18.7 percent had heightened glucose levels. A year later, each number dipped to 4.8 percent and 16.2 percent, respectively.
One more piece of evidence is Melnyk’s hiring in 2012. She was recruited away from Arizona State University to lead the largest university in the nation to craft and implement a vision for OSU about how to become the healthiest university in the world.
“My job here is to spearhead health and wellness across the university,” she said.
Such programs were part of the university landscape before she arrived, however disparate they were between departments. Melnyk is out to lasso the broad array of them into a universal culture where health and wellness becomes an everyday occurrence.
She also is taking a cue from the private sector, who Melnyk says is way out in front of the educational world in implementing a centralized approach and where data indicates a $4 to $5.50 return on investment for every dollar spent on health and wellness programs.
“Universities have been very slow to do it,” she said.

Sense of urgency

The university has established a partnership with the Human Performance Institute to help bring about change. The institute, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson Family of Cos., focuses on nutrition, exercise and wellness programs as a way to enhance the performance of leaders and organizations.
Reaching out to its brethren, Ohio State in April will host a summit for higher education leaders on the subject. Melnyk said rising numbers of people diagnosed as obese, having diabetes or stricken with a chronic illness are a ticking time bomb for the nation.
“We’re living in an era where one out of three people will have diabetes,” she said. “We have to approach it with a sense of urgency.”
Helping to implement OSU’s philosophy is Megan Amaya, who Melnyk hired as her director of health promotion and wellness. She is the link between the theoretical and the practical.
“I promote wellness wherever I go,” she said.
Capitalizing on a 10-year history of wellness programs at Ohio State has helped but there still is a long row to hoe, Amaya said, adding that selling the idea is a cultural and personal behavior chore.
Steps taken since YP4H was created include creating a parallel wellness effort under the heading of Buckeye Wellness, sort of a one-stop shop of wellness tips and ideas including a team of OSU innovaters who promote wellness in their respective area. The university Feb. 25 launched a web portal for Buckeye Wellness. Amaya said its first day showed 3,000 unique visitors – 8 percent of the OSU staff and faculty.