29 May

SMALL Steps can lead to BIG Behavior Change

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Behavior Change, Health Innovation, Personal Health. Tagged: , , , , , .

While many employers recognize the benefits of providing a corporate wellness program, traditional approaches to health behavior change tend to be one-dimensional and often fail to meet the needs and expectations of today’s consumer.

The latest behavior change psychology shows us consumers are more likely to feel a sense of failure if they set (and fail to meet) a large goal. To increase the likelihood of sustained engagement, desired behaviors should be broken into simple, small steps that are impossible to NOT meet. By focusing on changing behaviors through attainable steps, rapid cycles of accomplishments are created, keeping users engaged and more importantly realizing continued success.

Unfortunately, making healthy behaviors easy for real people – one small step at a time – has not been available for employer wellness initiatives…until now!

Introducing RedBrick JourneysTM adaptive behavior change program. RedBrick Journeys is a breakthrough consumer engagement and behavior change system, which brings a fundamentally new approach to personalizing and delivering employer health improvement programs. RedBrick Journeys is designed to break desired behaviors into simple, small steps that are driven by the profile and preferences of each participant.

RedBrick Journeys reinvents how an employee interacts and participates in their employer’s health and wellness program:

  • Journeys are based on extensive consumer research by RedBrick, and grounded in the breakthrough work of Dr. BJ Fogg, director of Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab.
  • Unlike traditional programs, Journeys take a “small steps” approach that reflects how people actually embrace new habits.
  • Through small steps and behavior triggers, Journeys create a pattern of success that builds confidence and avoids the failure syndrome.
  • Journeys are mobile, social, fun and easy. They take out the drudgery and replace it with a fun, game-like approach that can be accessed “across screens.”
  • Journeys start out highly personalized and continue to adapt to the participant’s profile and preferences – they get smarter over time.

At RedBrick, we are firm believers that innovation is critical to creating a fresh and positive user-experience. We are excited about the potential of this advanced approach to a personalized health engagement experience.

14 May

The Weight of a Nation – Consequences, Choices, and Challenges of Obesity

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Health Innovation. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

The Health Innovation Blog applauds The Weight of the Nation project and invites you to learn more, participate, and join the conversation.

Bringing together the nation’s leading research institutions, THE WEIGHT OF THE NATION is a presentation of HBO and the Institute of Medicine (IOM), in association with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and in partnership with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and Kaiser Permanente.

The centerpiece of THE WEIGHT OF THE NATION campaign is the four-part documentary series, each featuring case studies, interviews with our nation’s leading experts, and individuals and their families struggling with obesity. The first film, CONSEQUENCES, examines the scope of the obesity epidemic and explores the serious health consequences of being overweight or obese. The second, CHOICES, offers viewers the skinny on fat, revealing what science has shown about how to lose weight, maintain weight loss and prevent weight gain. The third, CHILDREN IN CRISIS, documents the damage obesity is doing to our nation’s children. Through individual stories, this film describes how the strong forces at work in our society are causing children to consume too many calories and expend too little energy; tackling subjects from school lunches to the decline of physical education, the demise of school recess and the marketing of unhealthy food to children. The fourth film, CHALLENGES, examines the major driving forces causing the obesity epidemic, including agriculture, economics, evolutionary biology, food marketing, racial and socioeconomic disparities, physical inactivity, American food culture, and the strong influence of the food and beverage industry.

More information can be found on their website or view their trailer below.

10 May

The Fat on the Fire and its Soaring Expense: Infographic Capturing the Cost of Obesity

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Financial Health, Health Innovation. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Think you’ve heard every possible cause for surging healthcare costs?  How about this one – the replacement costs hospitals are paying for new toilets. Unfortunately, it’s not a frivolous expense. Rather, the latest canary in the coalmine of U.S. weight-related health declines. Our unhealthy nutrition and exercise habits have gotten in such bad shape (and our bodies along with them), hospitals are having to replace wall mounted commodes with floor mounted ones.

If mass plumbing reconfiguration is not a warning sign, what is?

For the first time ever, the economic peril of obesity is being touted as being more serious and costly than that previous poster child of bad behavior – smoking. Obesity is a problem we all are impacted by, regardless of our own personal Body Mass Index. We share the cost burden and that, alone, is becoming untenable. Policy makers have taken notice because the crisis doesn’t just place employers and the health insured in a corner, but the nation’s competitive standing in the global economy and GDP, as well. The implications of the crisis are far-reaching and serious.

Here’s the good news – the behavior trend continues heading in the wrong direction but the response against it is at least gaining momentum. The U.S. Health Care Reform Law of 2010 allows employers to hold obese workers responsible for 30 to 50 percent more of their share of healthcare expenses if they choose not to participate in a qualified wellness program. Employers aligning healthcare financing with behaviors AND providing personally relevant and socially engaging support to individuals who choose to engage are realizing impactful behavior change and the financial advantages that follow.

A study just released indicates a significant healthcare savings, $85 billion – if we manage to scale back obesity rates just 1% annually.

The proverbial elephant in the room – it’s not so proverbial, in this case. It really is standing front and center in the room…and bowing the floor joists. Isn’t it time we address it?

Obesity Trends in a Nutshell

2 May

Gamification of Health is No Game

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Behavior Change, Health Innovation, Social Health. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

If you read the recent article in the Wall Street Journal on gamification’s emerging role in health, you’re already aware that digital gaming techniques are proving to be an effective behavioral game changer. The article explores case studies (including RedBrick clients) that demonstrate gamification techniques are engaging employees and shaping lasting health improvements. But what’s behind their success? How are game mechanics tapping into health engagement and behavior change motivations so elusive in yesterday’s employer wellness initiatives? And maybe more importantly – is the early success of healthy behavior gamification a passing fad?

No fad.

Gamification is not the same as gaming. Gamification applies the techniques of game mechanics to shape target behaviors. The reason they work, and will continue to work shaping those target behaviors is they leverage the power of immediate reward and social elements.

Assigning points to activities, advancing through levels, using badges as status-markers, and integrating surprise and delight are ways to make an employee’s personal investment in future good health gratifying in the here-and-now. These elements tap into the universal human desires for skill mastery, achievement, autonomy, and social acceptance. They reinforce small successes in ways that have a profound impact on self-confidence and self-efficacy, creating positive associations that last.

By wrapping game mechanics around a desired habit, you can create an experience that drives sustained behavior change more effectively than didactic or knowledge-based approaches. Incorporating the social dimension takes gamification a step further by allowing employees to work collectively, competitively, or both at the same time.

Growing evidence suggests that gamified health behavior change approaches are out-competing traditional clinical and behavioral approaches and at a fraction of the cost. With healthier employees as the outcome, gamification of health has quickly proven to be serious business.

30 Apr

Measureable and Meaningful: Which Benefits of Corporate Wellness Programs Are the Most Important?

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Financial Health, Health Innovation, Personal Health, Social Health. Tagged: , , , .

Recent studies on workplace wellness strategies have found that employers and employees benefit in multiple ways from corporate wellness programs. The article, Employers, Employees, and Even Society Benefit from Office Wellness Programs, highlights recent survey findings representing more than 13 million employees worldwide and the benefits that employers and employees (and in some cases, their families) are seeing, thanks to their wellness programs.

Quantitative benefits that employers could enjoy include fewer employee sick days, reduced health care insurance costs and decreased employee turnover, to name a few.

Employers also found less measurable, but equally important qualitative findings, such as improved morale and increases in other forms of employee productivity.

On the flip side, employees participating in wellness programs recognized that besides paying less in healthcare premiums, they had more energy, felt healthier and happier, were more health-conscious, put more emphasis on attaining a work-life balance, experienced greater camaraderie with coworkers and felt as though they had a greater support system.

As if that isn’t enough to make a corporate wellness program worthwhile, employees who had participated in a wellness initiative reported that they felt valued by their employers. The feeling of being personally valued by a company with thousands of employees goes a long way for both the employee and employer. It’s safe to say that making sure your employees feel valued is a huge factor in employee productivity, turnover and overall company success.

It is easy to focus on reducing your company’s healthcare costs, lowering the number of employee sick days, and decreasing employee turnover rates. However, it is equally important to consider how your wellness program might increase employee morale, improve office culture and foster employee loyalty.

Sound off: What “intangible” or qualitative benefits have you noticed from your corporate wellness program?

23 Apr

Kiss Me I’m Irisin!

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Behavior Change, Health Innovation, Personal Health. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .

In a past post we examined the negative impacts living a sedentary lifestyle can have on your health. Now, there is new information that shows just how important exercising is to our bodies. Recently a study that analyzed the benefits of exercise on a variety of organ systems uncovered a newly identified hormone – irisin. Researchers found that when muscles are in a sustained activated state they release irisin, which converts white fat to brown fat throughout the body.

This transformation is extremely important because white fat store extra energy as fatty tissue. Brown fat, on the other hand, “burns off” the extra energy by increasing the basal metabolic rate. Individuals that have a disproportionate rate of white to brown fat will experience weight gain and inflammatory changes, ultimately leading to a greater risk of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The impact of irisin is pretty amazing. Researchers established that the increase in irisin levels in blood results in increased energy expenditures (i.e. burning more calories) with no further changes in exercise or caloric intake. It was found that irisin contributes to the control of blood sugar and insulin levels, reduces the risk of diabetes and aids in weight loss.

We all know that exercise is a critical component of long-term health, but it’s always interesting to understand why. So, the next time you put on a green shirt, hear a bagpipe or play a round of golf, remember the Fightin’ Irisin – they may be small, but their benefits are like finding a pot of gold for your body!

- Jeff Dobro, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, RedBrick Health

16 Apr

What it all comes down to…Behavior Change

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Behavior Change, Health Innovation, Personal Health. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

BJ Fogg of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab present Five Secrets of Behavior Change - Hot Triggers to New Habits

A crew of us recently returned from the highly attended Conference Board’s Health Care Employee Conference in San Diego. The event was a who’s who in terms of innovation in wellness, health management, health & productivity and health engagement. High-performing Fortune 500 employers. Leading nationwide consultants. Top providers and vendors in the space. A plethora of topics were a buzz in the keynotes, breakout sessions, and halls of the conference, including ever-so pending health reform updates and implications, progressive incentive program designs, advanced reporting and analytics, and greater transparency of data. All topics worthy of discussion and debate, aimed at creating cost-effective solutions for employers.

Within the sea of noteworthy conversations, RedBrick was proud to sponsor a highly trending topic we believe is the driving force behind the success of employer health, wellness, and increased productivity – Behavior Change. Between our highly successful four-hour pre-conference workshop and our in-conference breakout session (the most highly attended at the event), it’s clear the market is clamoring for thought leadership around what drives healthy habits. Leading our sessions was one of the foremost experts on behavior change, Dr. BJ Fogg, Director of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab. He guided attendees through practical application of motivation waves, ability and small steps, and placing hot triggers in the path of those ready to engage.

We also demonstrated a beta version of our latest cutting-edge product innovations and journey-based health-improvement programs, created in concert with Dr. Fogg, and are thrilled to see the enthusiasm from the large employer market. A good sign we’re continuing to take the right steps to further engage employees in their health, create healthier populations, and lower costs.

9 Apr

What “Incents” Better Health?

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Financial Health, Health Innovation. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

A recent USA Today article on the use of wellness incentives to drive health engagement has popped-up on numerous industry social media sites this week. The article lays out the rationale, increased usage (54% of employers in 2011) and their effectiveness. On the flip side, critics argue around issue of fairness and discrimination.

Whatever your stance, with well over 50% of healthcare costs attributed to behavior, it’s clear we’re in a system that will run financially amuck without greater engagement of individuals. It’s also clear incentives and rewards will be a tool to help drive that engagement. As our head of Health Strategy, Kurt Cegielski, recently discussed at the Institute for Health and Productivity Management Conference in Orlando, the key is to create a fair rewards system that provides reasonable alternatives for everyone participating and realize incentives are only one lever when engaging consumers. Incentives foster extrinsic motivation, but you need clear communications, pertinent program design and a strong culture of health in the workplace and home to make engagement easy and create intrinsic motivations that drive sustained engagement and behavior change.

More importantly, to combat skyrocketing costs attributed to poor behaviors, we need to create individual accountability. Those who engage in their health pay less while being subsidized by those that do not engage in their health (with everyone given a fair and attainable opportunity to engage). We need to take rewards beyond the mindset of simply being add-on incentives. Rewards are the first step in changing the way we finance healthcare.

2 Apr

Exercise is the Latest Prescription for Cancer Patients

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Health Innovation, Personal Health. Tagged: , , .

Guest blogger David Haas of the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance…

Researchers have known for over a decade that exercise offers a number of benefits to cancer patients. Studies have shown exercise helps to counteract the side effects of treatments while increasing their effectiveness. There are still many holes in the research to be filled, but there is an even greater need for cancer programs across the country to take the steps needed to include physical fitness experts into treatment teams. Due to patient demands and the influx of accredited trainers, this is starting to happen.

Though many studies and reviews of the published literature have occurred in the years since, it is illustrative to note that back in 2000, researchers were already aware of the need for recommending a general exercise prescription for cancer patients. That prescription is the same given to the general public, consisting of 20-30 minutes a day for 3-5 days a week of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise. Though researchers then were careful to exclude bone cancers, due to the risk of further injury, a fitness expert has the knowledge to design an exercise program for any patient, including those diagnosed with childhood leukemia or mesothelioma.

How Much Exercise is Needed to See the Benefits?

Though the goal amount of exercise is stated above, we all know that treatments and the cancer itself can often have debilitating effects on physical fitness and stamina. Also, many people are not in the best of health when they receive the initial diagnosis. Though the goal is to get 150 minutes a week of exercise, some patients feel lucky to just get out of bed. Fortunately, the benefits of exercise for quality of life and relief of symptoms like fatigue, depression, appetite loss and constipation do not rely solely on meeting a set number of minutes a week.

The underlying goal to working toward physical fitness is to increase the body’s adaptability. When the body has to work, it is forced to make changes in the allocation of resources, and it is these changes that are responsible for the benefits. To put it bluntly, even passive range-of-motion stretching for bed-ridden patients will offer benefits.

More exercise is certainly better, when done under the care of a fitness expert consulting with the treating doctor, but everyone has to start somewhere. Make physical fitness a part of your treatment plan, and enjoy the benefits of a more active lifestyle for many years to come!

- David Haas, Awareness Program Advocate, Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance

28 Mar

Bring on the Fogg. Motivations, Abilities & Triggers to Drive Behavior Change

Posted by Health Innovation Blog in Behavior Change, Health Innovation, Personal Health.

BJ Fogg, Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

By now it’s a broken record – unhealthy behaviors are resulting in out of control healthcare costs. One of the foremost experts on behavior change, Dr. BJ Fogg, Director of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, has set out to crack the code on changing behaviors and creating new habits.On Wednesday March 29, at the Conference Board’s Health Care Employee Conference in San Diego, Dr. Fogg will be leading an interactive “mini boot camp” that explores how focusing on the convergence of three elements – motivations, abilities and triggers – can transform daily decisions into sustained, healthy behaviors. This event will provide new perspectives on human behavior and show how to become more confident in applying these important lessons to a company’s health strategy.

For the loyal readers of this blog, we will be “live-tweeting” from this event so you can gain the same insights by following along from the comforts of your own office or home. On Twitter, simply follow @redbrickhealth or use #tcbhec to access the highlights of the workshop.  The workshop will run 1-5 pm Pacific time. Don’t hesitate to join the conversation.

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 189 other followers