Calling all HEROES: New grants available for youth ready to fight obesity

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three children is obese or overweight, putting them on the road to lifelong chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease. If left unchecked or untreated, UnitedHealthcare’s 2009 America’s Health Rankings™ study projects obesity will affect 43 percent of adults by 2018 and will add nearly $344 billion in that year alone to the nation’s annual direct health care costs – more than 21 percent of total health care spending!

That’s why it’s so important for young people to understand the risks of obesity and learn about good health early in life, and it’s why we launched the HEROES program two years ago.

Our UnitedHealth HEROES program awards micro grants to schools and youth organizations that come up with creative plans for how to educate their communities about the importance of healthy lifestyles. We gave out 265 grants across the country this year, including 24 in Pennsylvania, and we’re now accepting applications for 2011 grants.

We’re calling on even more youth in Pennsylvania to join the fight against childhood obesity and become health HEROES! Teachers and community leaders can submit 2011 grant applications online at www.ysa.org/HEROES until midnight on October 22, 2010.

In 2010, we gave grants to organizations all across Pennsylvania, including one to high school students from the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative Youthworks Program in Philadelphia who transformed an abandoned plot of land into a community orchard and amphitheater; to students at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in Levittown, who photographed “unhealthy signals” in their community such as the placement of junk food in grocery store aisles for a presentation to parents, school boards and legislators; and to students at Claysville Elementary School, who created a “Healthy Living” informational DVD and distributed it to classmates, community members and local media outlets.

I can’t wait to see what creative projects our health HEROES come up with to encourage their friends, families and community members to live healthier lives!

Companies can and do make wellness work on the job

It’s difficult to find a work/life balance today, when work consumes so much of our lives. If we don’t have the time or the resources, it’s a struggle to stick to a healthy lifestyle. But as I’ve learned working for UnitedHealthcare, success on the job doesn’t have to come at the expense of personal health.

That’s because more and more employers are providing the tools employees need to make smarter, healthier decisions, and the tools really help. According to a recent MetLife study of employee benefits, 85% of employees who participate in wellness programs successfully lose weight, while 84% improve their diet and exercise, 81% better manage health problems like high blood pressure, cholesterol and stress and 63% are able to stop smoking.

Why, then, are there still many workers out there not taking advantage of wellness programs? The same MetLife study found that even though more employers are including wellness initiatives in health benefits, just 57% of employees are participating.

Those statistics got me thinking about what different companies can do to get their employees to take a more active role in improving their health. To start, they should take a look at the many employer-sponsored wellness programs in the area that are already taking off.

Companies throughout the Philadelphia region, of all sizes and from many different industries, have found creative ways to engage their employees in wellness initiatives. Some of them are doing such a great job, UnitedHealthcare, in partnership with the Philadelphia Business Journal, decided to give them an award.

At American Heritage Federal Credit Union, for example, employees compete against each other in the “Maintain Don’t Gain” holiday weight-watching challenge. At Compas, Inc., staff members get to spend their lunch hour with a personal trainer. And teachers in the Downingtown area school district can actually win prizes for improving their health. That’s why they’re all winners of the 2010 UnitedHealthcare Healthy Workplace Award.

Here is a complete list of Healthy Workplace Award winners.

Healthier food products mean healthier choices, and that means healthier Americans.

An event I recently attended got me thinking about the fight against obesity. We work hard at UnitedHealthcare to educate adults and children on the importance of healthy lifestyle choices and develop new programs and initiatives to help make those choices easier. But it’s a nationwide epidemic, which means it will take a nationwide effort from all kinds of companies to really put an end to obesity.

At this event, I had the opportunity to talk with Doug Conant, chief executive officer of Campbell’s Soup and Denise Morrison, the president of Campbell’s North America, who I’ve come to know.

Doug and Denise are really focused on engaging the employees at Campbell’s in a team effort to create good tasting, more nutritious products. They know foods have to be delicious or consumers won’t buy them, but they also know the importance of giving consumers the option to make healthier choices. That’s why everyone at Campbell’s is working together to find ways to maintain the quality of they’re products while improving nutritional value, especially by reducing sodium levels.

And Campbell’s isn’t the only company making the shift to healthier goods. Especially now that First Lady Michelle Obama has launched her “Let’s Move” campaign to battle childhood obesity, more and more major players in the food industry are pledging to do their part and improve the nutritional value of their products.

Take Pepsi for example, which recently pledged to reduce sugar by 25 per cent, salt by 25 per cent and saturated fat by 15 per cent in its soda drinks and other products by 2015. The company also announced that it plans to remove all its sugary drinks from schools worldwide by 2010 and add new healthier products to its roster of Pepsi, Tropicana, Gatorade, Frito Lay and Quaker goods that include more whole grains, fiber, fruit, vegetables, key vitamins and minerals.

Kraft Foods made a similar announcement. The company, which is the largest food maker in North America, said it plans to cut sodium levels in its North American products, including Oreo, Jell-O, Chips Ahoy!, Oscar Meyer, Ritz and Velveeta brands, by about 10 percent over the next two years -- eliminating more than 10 million pounds, or 750 million teaspoons of salt!

If more food and beverage makers, restaurants and other companies throughout the U.S. step up to the plate, I know we can put a stop to these deadly rates of obesity. As long as we keep working to develop new products, encourage healthy choices and educate consumers on the importance of nutrition and exercise, we can have a healthier America.

Our new office challenge will get employees throughout Philadelphia working for better health.

On your mark, get set, go! It’s the Indy 500 of weight loss challenges, and it’s happening right here in Philadelphia. This summer, my company is teaming up with Philadelphia Magazine to launch a new get-fit office challenge.

Here’s how it’s going to work: Teams of ten employees from four different offices will compete to lose the most total pounds and improve their overall wellness. To help them through the process, we’re giving them a free eight-week gym membership and tons of nutrition and healthy lifestyle tips from some of Philly’s top health and fitness experts. The winners will earn the coveted title of Philly’s Fittest Office!

And because we want the winners of our “Be Well Philly Office Challenge” to keep up their new, healthier lifestyles, the grand prize is jam-packed with health and fitness gifts from local businesses. The prize includes a free year membership to Sweat Fitness, makeovers from Joseph Anthony Retreat Spa and Salon, Zoom! teeth whitening from Pennsylvania Center for Dental Excellence, new workout gear and much more.

What’s so great about this contest is that the team named Philly’s Fittest Office isn’t the only winner in the end. Everyone who competes has the chance to reap the benefits of adopting healthier eating habits, improving their physical fitness and taking a more active role in maintaining their overall health. The more employers and employees we can help get excited about making changes and living a healthier life, the closer we’ll be to better health for everyone.

You can find us on the road, connecting people across the country with the latest innovation in health care – Part 2

In my last post, I started talking about the Connected Care mobile demonstration clinic, a moving showcase of our telehealth initiative designed to make health care more accessible to underserved communities. It’s a truly remarkable program that could drastically improve our health care system, so I want to say a little more about it.

Right now, we’re working on building Connected Care into a national system of permanent telehealth clinics that will give patients across the country access to physicians and specialists when in-person visits are not possible, practical or convenient. As I mentioned before, the clinics can be set up in office buildings, town hall buildings, other medical clinics, government centers, retail locations or wherever else more convenient and affordable medical care is needed.

The Connected Care clinics combine video conferencing with sophisticated medical devices designed for remote use to expand the scope of physicians’ practices by enabling them to care for patients who are tens, hundreds or even thousands miles away. High-tech, integrated equipment coordinates with electronic medical records and other health information technology. Besides an examination camera, the telehealth location has a full range of medical office equipment, such as a dermascope, vital signs monitor, glucometer and electrocardiogram (ECG).

Here’s how a telehealth visit works: After the patient checks in to a clinic, a nurse or health care professional administers a pre-exam workup. A doctor then joins the visit live on a high-definition screen while the onsite professional administers the exam using diagnostic tools, creating a virtual yet personal experience remarkably similar to a face-to-face meeting. At the end of the exam, the onsite professional works with the physician to develop a treatment plan if necessary, coordinate educational materials and respond to any questions or concerns the patient might have.

Connected Care clinics can help make health care more efficient and affordable for patients by minimizing expensive visits to the emergency room, eliminating long trips to see specialists and making preventive services like flu shots, biometric screenings and healthy checkups more convenient. It’s a step forward for higher quality, lower costs and a better health care system for everyone.

You can find us on the road, connecting people across the country with the latest innovation in health care – Part 1

Pop quiz: What has 18 wheels, works by satellite and makes it possible for a doctor to examine a patient from thousands of miles away?

It’s UnitedHealthcare’s Connected Care demonstration truck, setup as a mobile showcase of our latest innovation. Wherever it parks, the truck opens up for tours and demonstrations of the telehealth technology we’re using to establish permanent “Connected Care” clinics in cities across the country.

These Connected Care clinics combine audio and video technology and cutting-edge health care resources to greatly expand physicians’ reach into rural, urban and other underserved areas. The clinics can be set up wherever needed: in the workplace, in a city center, at a retail location or in rural areas to create a virtual office visit for people who don’t have the means or ability to travel to a doctor for an in-person examination. Doctors can see and hear the patient live from their locations in real time, and patients can see and hear a doctor live on a high-definition screen at their telehealth clinic location.

So far, we’ve launched a few pilot clinics around the country, but we’re still working on building Connected Care into a national network. That’s why we’re taking our mobile truck around to show doctors and other medical professionals, employers, insurance brokers and the general public how telehealth technology works.

The UnitedHealth Group Connected Care mobile clinic is on a nationwide tour. After setting up shop in Erie, Pa last weekend outside of Jerry Uht Park, home of the Erie SeaWolves minor league baseball team, the truck will be here in Philadelphia on Thursday for our Summer Splash event with Mayor Michael Nutter!

The mobile demonstration clinic is pretty impressive to see in person – at 80 feet in length, the truck is longer than a standard tennis court and can send voice, video and data to a satellite 22,300 miles above the Earth in about a quarter-second. And with stops across the country scheduled all the way into the winter, it could be on its way to a city near you. Make sure to stop by and experience firsthand how telehealth technology can transform our health care system.

UnitedHealthcare improves another online aid to help consumer better estimate medical costs.

Last time I told you about recent improvements we have made to our Quicken Health Expense Tracker software, which helps UnitedHealthcare’s consumers manage and pay their health care costs. 

More big news! Health Expense Tracker is not the only online software we’ve upgraded.  We also just expanded our Treatment Cost Estimator to include physician-specific pricing on numerous medical procedures.

The Treatment Cost Estimator pinpoints fees for treatments and procedures specific to individual network physicians and geographic areas.  Covering 116 diseases, 90 surgeries and procedures, and more than 500 individual services, the program provides cost estimates for thousands of physicians in more than 400 different markets. 

Now, the Treatment Cost Estimator also incorporates UnitedHealthcare customers’ specific health plan information to estimate what portion of those costs they would be responsible for paying and remind them of any available funds in their health care accounts.  The program provides a more complete view of how a treatment cost differs from doctor to doctor, giving UnitedHealthcare plan participants the power to comparison shop for health services. 

Health Expense Tracker and Treatment Cost Estimator both reflect UnitedHealthcare’s commitment to employ user-friendly technology to make health care and health insurance information more accessible and easier to understand – the key to making health care more efficient and effective.