Minnesota lawmakers launch federal wellness caucus

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Congressman Erik Paulsen have bridged the partisan chasm to create […]

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Congressman Erik Paulsen have bridged the partisan chasm to create a Congressional Wellness Caucus.

The aim of the caucus is to put workplace wellness on the national agenda, reports the Star Tribune.

Sen. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, and Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat from Wisconsin, are also joining the caucus, which was approved by the House on Friday. It is expected to be fully functional by fall.

Workplace programs have been shown to be effective. In 2010, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported that U.S. researchers tracked 757 hospital workers who voluntarily participated in a 12-week, team-based wellness program that focused on diet and exercise. Before the study commenced, data on the participants’ weights, lifestyles and heart disease risk factors were collected. The same information was gathered at the end of the wellness program and a year after the program ended.

At the start of the study, 33 percent of participants were overweight (body mass index, or BMI, of 25 to 29.9) and 30 percent were obese (BMI of 30 or more). The researchers found that obese participants lost the most weight — 3 percent at 12 weeks and 0.9 percent at one year — and were most likely to reduce their intakes of dietary sugar. Overweight participants did almost as well, with an average weight loss of 2.7 percent at 12 weeks and 0.4 percent at one year.

In Minnesota, venture-backed health IT firm RedBrick Health offers a wellness program that medical device manufacturer Welch Allyn has been using since 2007. Tobacco use among employees is down 20 percent since the program was offered.

And there have been direct financial savings, too. Welch Allyn has saved an estimated $1.32 million in total health and productivity savings over two years, according to RedBrick Health.

Yet, the Star Tribune article noted that only about 27 percent of employers with 500 or more employees offer wellness programs and about 43 percent with 10,000 or more do, according to health consultant Mercer.

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