Health and Fitness in The Workplace

The first proponent of health promotion or wellness may have been Hippocrates himself ( Grossman 1983). When he and his medical students encountered an unfamiliar city, he would advise his students to become acquainted with the lifestyles of the local residents by noting their work patterns and eating habits.

The Young Men's Christian Association has been described as one of the oldest wellness organizations ( Grossman 1983). The triangular emblem of the Y.M.C.A., which symbolizes its dedication to mind, body, and spirit, was adopted in the early 1880s. Many wellness proponents today subscribe to the idea of the person as an interrelated whole consisting of mind, body, and spirit.

Most health care is self-care. By far, most health related activities are carried out by the individual and family members in the privacy of their home ( Santa-Barbara 1979). How successful these practices are, to a large extent, determines the individual's need for using professional health care services. Therefore, these personal health practices, which are largely the responsibility of the individual, determine the costs of the health care system. The so-called "lifestyle diseases," which account for such a high proportion of the total health care budget ( Lalonde 1974), are the result of personal activities over which the professional health care system has traditionally had little influence. These lifestyle diseases are the result of inadequate self-care.

 

According to these statements, marketing is something that happens after the planning and development of the wellness program is done. It suggests that marketing is advertising, promotion, and selling. Marketing includes these components, but a problem arises in limiting definitions of marketing to them ( Bonaguro and Miaoulis 1983).

Problems in Today's Society

The increasing complexity of modern society with the accompanying breakdown in traditional values and structures creates a wide range of pressures and stressors that challenges each of us.

The high mobility of the nuclear family has put great distances between family members. Almost one half of today's marriages end in divorce. The search for personal privacy causes neighbors to be strangers. The "cashless" society creates a false sense of financial worth. The decreasing value of the Canadian dollar, rising real estate values, and increased taxes make first-time home ownership a financial burden or an unrealistic goal for many young couples.

Stress management has become a very timely and popular workshop, and numerous groups and professionals now offer stress management programs. Certain components in a stress management program distinguish a poor to mediocre program from a professional, state-of-theart program. Any program that provides more than a few hours of material should have more than a single focus. For example, programs that focus solely on time management or on relaxation training are providing only one technique for stress management. Also, programs that focus only on identifying the stressors (those things in our work and personal lives that are sources of stress) and then spend the remaining time suggesting ways to change those outside sources of stress are neglecting one of the more powerful techniques in stress management, that of changing certain thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs about those stressors.