Last week, we had the pleasure of attending the 2014 Art & Science of Health Promotion Conference in Colorado Springs. Held at the beautiful Broadmoor hotel, the conference offered us a chance to discuss our new ideas in the field of health promotion and hear incredible presentations from the industry's thought leaders. 
Here are just a few of our favorite highlights and key takeaways from the event:
Vic Strecher, the opening keynote speaker, offered an incredibly inspirational start for the conference. His focus was on using a person's core values to find their true purpose. According to Strecher, a sense of purpose in life could be linked to powerful behavior change and a reduced risk of health problems like addition relapse, obesity, heart disease, sleep problems, stroke and depression. He suggested we stop focusing on disease and death in health promotion, which has created a negative vortex that scares employees rather than inciting positive changes. To measure an individual's progress towards fulfilling their purpose in life, he used the acronym SPACE - sleep, presence, activity, creativity, eating - that allows you to keep yourself on track and aligned with your purpose on a daily basis. He created an app which assists in crafting a powerful and personally meaningful purpose statement and then logs how each day affects that goal. (We highly suggest testing it out!)
Day two's keynote speaker was Jared Bernstein, Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. His presentation, "Health Care, Meet the Economy: Now Play Nice!" was an interesting conversation in how health care costs and the American economy affect one aother. According to Bernstein, health care spending represents 18% of the US economy, although we are seeing a favorable cost trend in health care spending. Bernstein suggested building on this trend by targeting chronic diseases, high drug costs, and unhealthy food subsidies. "1,200 calories of cookies cost the same as 250 calories of carrots," he pointed out, which encourages individuals who are on a budget to eat poorly. (How can you change this culture in your workplace?)
Here are a few other quick thoughts, tips and statistics we gathered from the conference:
- To help employees unplug from technology, employers may ultimately create policies about logging off after 6 p.m.
- Future wellness: Family wellness will take on new meaning. Think about including spouses, siblings and children.
- Elite athletes rely on intrinsic motivation and goal pursuit. How can we use this to change employee behaviors?
- Make sure your employees have autonomy - wellness needs to be a personal choice they make.
- Incentives need to change. The average employer spends $594 per employee, per year on wellness incentives.
- The size of theater seats have increased significantly. In 1890s they were 18" x 24", in 2010 they were 23" x 38"
- There seems to be a shift from wellness incentives to building a culture of wellbeing. Incentives cannot make up for an unhealthy workplace culture. What does this trend look like to you?
- How do you get more energy and vitality vs. less disease?
- Create a wellness champion network; have monthly meetings and an annual summit to connect with champions. Create a feedback loop to encourage communication.
- Stop trying to reduce health risks and focus on helping your employees build self-esteem, strong relationships and thriving families.
- Peers have been known to influence a person's health, especially in regards to happiness, fruit and veggie consumption and cancer screenings.
- "Fitness is for fit people." Should we change the marketing around fitness and the stereotypes associated with it?
To see more highlights from the conference, check out our live-tweets at @totalwellnessus.
Which of the ideas above are you most interested in? Comment below.
