Starting A Health Promotion Career

A career in Health Promotion often starts with a college degree. Yes, there are other ways to get involved in Health Promotion but most include starting your own business in health or wellness products or supplements.

The majority of jobs require at least a Bachelor’s degree in health science, public health, physical activity science, physical education, health management, and even nutrition or dietetics.

More employers however are starting to require additional education, experience, and certifications when hiring health professionals these days.

This might include a Master’s Degree, 5+ years of hands on experience and even professional certification. Among the most popular certifications include CHES (Certified Health Education Specialist), ACE (American Council of Exercise), or ACSM (American Council of Sports Medicine).

Professionals reaching this level are often found in leadership and management positions in schools, non-profit organizations, medical care clinics, hospitals, and even high Fortune 500 employers leading their health promotion programs.

You can also continue your education into the doctoral health promotion programs which would allow you to specialize in advanced areas of Health Promotion in the medical care, social, political, ethical, economic, and psychological fields.

What can you do with a career in Health Promotion?

There are so many things that you can do with a career in health promotion and you can specialize in one or multiple areas. Here are some examples for you to review and they might give you an idea of what you would like to do in the future.

Health Promotion in Non-Profit Organizations:

The American Cancer Society, Red Cross, American Diabetes Associations are example organizations that rely on health promotion professionals to promote their missions, educate and design health promotion programs that help them meet their goals, give presentations, and organize special events.

Health Promotion in Businesses:

Research continues to tell us that healthy employees are more productive, have less sick days, and are overall happier employees. Businesses rely on health promotion professionals to help educate employees about better health through health promotion programs offered at the workplace.

These health promotion programs are continually becoming more important as the cost of medical care and health insurance continues to rise. Businesses are investing into worksite wellness to help manage and even reduce a few of these costs.

Health Promotion is Hospitals / Clinical Settings:

Examples of health promotion professionals needed in this setting includes physical activity therapists, occupational therapists, and dietitians, public health nurses, etc, that provide patients with clinical guidance.

These are typically health promotion professionals with a specialized degree and require continuous education and training to stay ahead of the latest research and techniques.

Why Offer Employee Health Screening

Employee health screening, typically offered through a health fair or wellness fair, are among the best ways to identity past, current, and potential health issues among a companies employees.

When used in conjunction with the health risk assessments, employee health screenings are an effective way for employers to help educate employees about their health status.

Types of Employee Health Screening

The most common types of employee health screening offered at the workplace include blood pressure screenings, cholesterol screenings, glucose testing (diabetes risk), body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference.

Depending on how complex employers want their health fair you can also include additional health screenings including bone mineral density, lung function testing, vision, hearing, and skin cancer screenings and many others.

The more employees know about their health, the better their chances of making change. Knowledge is power! However, most often the type and amount of screenings offered is solely based on cost of services.

Does Employee Health Screening Help?

Early detection and chronic disease prevention is very important to addressing increased medical care claims among organizations. Knowing employee health risk factors not only allows behavior change but save lives, and can help prevents excess health claim costs down the road.

By way of example, the average treatment cost for early detection of prostate cancer is about $45,000 versus treatment at a later stage is $145,000. The difference is a life but it also is the cost of a wonderful, comprehensive Workplace Health and Wellness Program. If funding is an issue for upper management, be sure to share this information with them.

On-site employee health screening is often low-cost and we generally recommend that employers host opportunities like this once a year. The most important thing you can provide employees is a chance to achieve or maintain good quality of life.

A large majority of employers allocate wellness benefits to employees annually for preventative care exams (mammograms, blood tests, immunizations, etc). While this is a wonderful benefits, a large majority of employees either don’t realize they have it, don’t know how to use it, or just plain don’t get routine exams when they need it for whatever reason.

Giving employees access to employee health screening and other  services onsite removes the barriers like lack of time and inconvenience for employees making it more likely that they will participate.

Is there a need for health promotion?

Here are a few of the latest statistics to support the need for corporate health promotion. Feel free to use them while you launch support for a health promotion program at your company.

• Approximately 95 percent of the $1.4 TRILLION that we spend as a nation on medical care costs goes directly to medical care services while approximately ONLY 5 percent is allocated to preventing disease and health promotion.
• At least 70 percent of all medical care claims are due to modifiable health risks (i.e. smoking, obesity, alcohol use) that are 100 percent preventable.
• The excess costs of an worker that smokes is $960 per year, $401 for excess weight, $370 for high cholesterol, and $343 for high blood pressure.
• If an worker has 2 out of the 3 of these risks factors, you can see it really adds up to total costs to have them as an worker.
• Healthy employees are typically happier, more satisfied, and more productive in their work as well as their personal life.
• 65 percent of American adults are not actively engaged in regular physical activity and–more than 30 percent of adult Americans are OBESE!

As you can tell there is a need for corporate health promotion and not just for adults, but children as well. Corporate health promotion is just a wonderful way to meet the requirements of the masses all in one location!

When an worker that is also a spouse or parent learns something in the workplace about improving their health they share the information with their family as well.

Corporate Health Promotion Plan communication is important to all facets of Wellness and preventive medicine and is relevant to:
• Healthcare provider-patient relationships
• An individual’s exposure to, search for, and use of Corporate Health Promotion Plan information
• Effective counseling and patient education for behavior change
• Content of public health messages and community campaigns

Effective health communication should have these attributes:
• Accuracy: content is valid and error-free
• Availability: delivered or placed where the intended audience can access the information
• Balance: content presents benefits and risks of potential actions
• Consistency: content is locally consistent over time and is also consistent with information from other reliable sources
• Evidence-based: content and methods of delivery are based on relevant scientific evidence
• Reach: content gets to or is available to as many employees as possible in the target population
• Reliability: content source is credible; content is kept up-to-date
• Repetition: delivery of/access to the content is continued over time, to reinforce the impact with the audience and to reach new members of the target population
• Timeliness: content is provided when the audience is most receptive to, or in need of, the specific information
• Understandability: reading, language levels, and format are appropriate for the specific audience (i.e., Employees, Family Members, Garrison leadership, etc.)

What the research says about health communication
• Health communication best supports Wellness when multiple communication methods are used to reach specific audiences.
• Effective Wellness and communication initiatives should reflect an audiencecentered perspective, and reflect the preferred formats, contexts, and method of communication for the intended audience.

Material adapted from: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy People 2010. 2nd ed. With Understanding and Improving Health and Objectives for Improving Health. 2 vols. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 2000.
http://www.healthypeople.gov/document/HTML/Volume1/11HealthCom.htm