Students might catch more glimpses of professors in sneakers and gym shorts this spring, thanks to the new incentives of the Office of Human Resources’ health and wellness program.
As colleges across the nation are encouraging faculty and staff to stay in shape, HR recently reinvigorated its program, AHealthyU.
During the first half of the spring semester, AHealthyU began offering several new activities that revolve around physical activity, according to Health Promotion Manager Amy Farr.
“Our goal is really to provide a variety of programs to AU faculty and staff to really help them find a balance between work and life and [to] help [making] healthy lifestyle choices a little bit easier,” Farr said.
These programs include a lunch series called Brown Bag Workshops, Weight Watchers and a competition tracking their exercising progress, Farr said. HR will also offer seated massages, costing $1 per minute, to relieve tension and give out financial rewards for completing an online health assessment.
The issues of eating right and exercise have become popular in the metro area. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., introduced a bill concerning healthy living on Jan. 13 encouraging the Centers for Disease Control to limit obesity through public and professional education on the topic.
Elsewhere in D.C., Georgetown University and George Washington University also have health and wellness programs for their faculty and staff. At Georgetown, the program called GUWellness started in 2007 and incorporates stress management, exercise and programs to help smokers quit, according to the school’s faculty and staff newspaper, Blue & Gray.
GW’s program, Colonial Community, encourages faculty and staff to participate in such programs as the U.S. President’s Council on Physical Fitness Challenge and Weight Watchers at Work, according to the school’s Web site.
But the incentives for the Weight Watchers meetings GW held in October differed from those offered under AHealthyU. Faculty and staff who participate in the program at AU are required to go to fewer sessions. Also, participants receive a $65 rebate if they attend at least 10 of the 12 meetings. One Weight Watchers session at AU would cost a staff member about $1.50 less than at GW.
Some might find programs involving weight loss and other health statistics to be overstepping privacy boundaries, according to a December article from the Chronicle for Higher Education.
AU did not intend these activities and incentives to seem intrusive. Instead, they hoped to encourage those on campus to take control of their health, according to Farr.
Gay Young, director of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Program and a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, liked the idea of rewarding employees for making healthy choices, but she worried that a health and wellness program might lead to negative consequences for those who could not afford to eat right.
“I think you have to realize that in reality being healthy, eating well, getting enough exercise and rest does mean that you have a certain level of resources, of material resources, frankly,” Young said. “Fast food is cheap.”
AHealthyU got off the ground in 2008 with the hiring of Farr, according to CAS School of Education, Teaching and Health Professor Anastasia Snelling, who supervises Farr and sits on the Benefits Committee.
Before AU discovered Farr, plans for the program had begun in accordance with the last step of the 2001 “15-Point Plan,” Snelling said. However, AHealthyU was not mentioned in a 2006 progress report on the plan.
AHealthyU is “inclusive,” Farr said. She did not think anyone had been turned away in the past, but her goal was to see the program expand its audience in the future, she said.
Farr hopes to also be able to expand HR’s services to spouses or same-sex partners of university employees, she said.
“It’s nice when you can not only just affect the people here at work, but then when we can start to impact the family, then we know that the likelihood of changing a particular health behavior is going to be much greater,” Farr said.
You can reach this staff writer at sparnass@theeagleonline.com.
