Health-Minder: A Useful Component of Corporate Wellness and Health Promotion Programs
If you are a Health Promotion Professional, Health-Minder
software can become a useful part of a comprehensive wellness program or a software aid to
health promotion research. Some of the ways Health-Minder can be used include:
Health Histories, Key to Understanding Health
Risks
Proper screenings, coupled with a detailed health history, including family
data. Health-Minder provides easy-to-use forms for entering illnesses, allergies,
medications, treatments and surgeries, health tests, and family health problems for which
the person may be at risk.
Lifestyle Education
A strong emphasis on lifestyle education about changes in habits, diet, and exercise.
Lifestyle-related diseases affect quality of life most severely, developing over time
unless both the individual and employer make a long-term commitment to prevent them.
Education on lifestyles should include instruction on diet, stress reduction,
proper body mechanics, the benefits of exercise, and such preventive medical care as
regular checkups and immunizations. Health-Minder helps calculate the Body Mass
Index, Aerobic Capacity, and the specific benefits of different forms of exercise.
Interactive screens help the user quickly estimate how much cholesterol, sodium, fat,
fiber, calcium, and caffeine he or she consumes in a day.
Tracking Lifestyle Changes
Follow-up
measurements to determine how
effective lifestyle education has been. Health-Minder's Measurement Diary tracks
results of users' efforts to change their lifestyles. Here the user may record exercise
goals (such as minutes walked, or pounds lifted), blood pressure readings, cholesterol
levels, even moods or energy levels. Many find that the act of recording such information
is intrinsically motivating.
Early Symptom Detection
Education on the recognition
of symptoms of potential health problems and how to communicate
concerns to health care providers. Health-Minder users are encouraged to monitor
their health by keeping a diary of worrisome symptoms, and printing it out for their
doctors. By answering some optional, symptom-related questions, the user is able to
communicate the extent and frequency of the problem better.
Health Resources for Self-Education
Information about how to take a more active role
in one’s health. Research shows that the more informed a patient is about a health
problem, the better he or she complies with treatment, leading to more successful
outcomes. Health-Minder provides an extensive list of resources
for gathering information about specific health problems via
telephone or the Internet. Visit our on-line resource center
and take a look at our FREEinteractive health
promotion calendar for 2001. Both have free and useful files to download and use
as part of a health promotion program.
Education on Illness Prevention
Steps to improve the health of the
employee’s family members. Because company-funded insurance plans often cover
dependants, it is equally important to focus on preventive
measures for the whole family. Parents should be educated about
vaccination timetables, and normal growth patterns for children and adolescents. They need
to learn how to prepare nutritious meals, and what the vitamin requirements are for
different age groups. Health-Minder has interactive screens for entering height,
weight, and developmental milestones for children. In addition, a child’s growth
pattern is plotted on a graph showing the patterns of other children of the same gender
and age, so a parent can spot a problem early. The Health-Minder Food Pyramid shows not
only the recommended distribution of protein, carbohydrates, fats, fruit and
vegetables in the daily diet, but also the recommended serving sizes for different ages
and activity levels. The RDA screen has information about the role and source of each
nutrient.
Contact
Health-Minder
If you would like more information about
including Health-Minder in your corporate wellness program, or in health promotion
research, please send e-mail to: info@Health-Minder.com
Take a minute to view the Health-Minder Slide Show for a quick product
overview. This presentation may also be downloaded for
local viewing if you have the Microsoft Power Point 97 viewer.
Do you know someone who would like to know about Health-Minder? Recommend-It™ to a friend or
colleague and win a Palm III™ Organizer from 3Com®! Click on the button to
enter.
Visit our Bookshelf to
see titles relating to corporate wellness programs and monitoring employee health.
Click on the pictures below to see the benefits
Health-Minder software has for different age groups and special interests.:
