by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
Fifteen people sitting in a room for three days might not seem healthy.
But it's the first step in redesigning UNM's program for employee health and wellness, said Carolyn Thompson, vice president of Human Resources.
A group will meet next week to discuss how to improve the health programs available for employees, including faculty and staff.
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The goal is to create a plan that is solid enough to be put into action immediately and tested later, Thompson said.
"This is a way to get going and get momentum," she said. "We're not going to get everything perfect without testing it. If we need to later, we can change the tires on the car while it's going 60 miles an hour."
It's impossible to say what will come out of the workshop, but the goal is to reorganize programs at UNM to make it easier for employees to stay healthy, Thompson said.
The World of Wellness Rapid Redesign Initiative is sponsored by administrators, including President David Harris and Provost Reed Dasenbrock.
The redesign team will present its suggestions to the sponsors
on Feb. 9.
It will implement the suggestions and adjust them based on employee feedback through April.
"The work doesn't end when the workshop's over," Thompson said. "It just starts. There could be a year more after that when we're still reorganizing."
Improving employee health would have two benefits, she said.
"Of course, we have our eye on the bottom line, and healthy employees are better workers," she said. "We also want our employees to just love working at UNM."
Nicholas Spezza, manager of the Employee Health Program, said it should be easy for employees to be healthy.
"We need to have a culture of health and wellness at UNM," he said. "People need to be able to make the choice every day to be healthy."
Elaine Phelps, manager of benefits for Human Resources, said UNM should do more to keep employees from getting sick.
"I'm of the opinion that the only way we'll be able to keep our (insurance) premiums going up the way we've seen in the past few years is to really focus on wellness," she said.
Phelps said 95 percent of money spent on health care in the U.S. goes toward disease treatment rather than prevention.
"We need to shift those resources into more programs to keep people healthy, rather than costly treatment for them once they're already ill," she said.
The initiative will try to find and eliminate redundant programs, Thompson said.
For example, she said she saw three organizations offering flu shots on campus last year.
"One of them was one price, another was less, and one of them was free," she said. "I don't think there was very much communication. Imagine if they all got together, one of them ordered a bunch of flu shots and gave them out, and then there are two people who can be doing something else."
Although there are already programs such as fitness classes, smoking cessation and nutrition services, they are not coordinated, Spezza said.
"There are so many people who are providing wellness services, but they've never gotten together to talk about how what they're doing works together," he said. "There's a lot of hands involved in making a healthy pie."
