The February 2006 newsletter, print version

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Past Issues

The February 2006 issue, online version.

DHHS Focuses on Employee Wellness: Many employees make a new year's resolution to eat more healthy foods, become more active, quit smoking, or reduce stress in their lives. Too often, those good resolutions are abandoned after only a few weeks or months. Dix campus employees now have greater support at work to help them make and keep new year's resolutions to improve their health and wellness.

Leadership DHHS Gets Positive Reviews

Salud y Saludos! Fitting In

Dr. Herman F. Easom Memorial

Partnerships and creative thinking mean more school nurses in Catawba County

"Color Me Healthy" Wins National Award

Doug Campbell receives SEPHLI Award

DHHS Teachers Receive National Board Certification

Career Banding in DHHS

Grants to NC agencies that help homeless total $16.3 million

Will You Qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit this Year?

DHHS focuses on employee wellness

Many employees make a new year's resolution to eat more healthy foods, become more active, quit smoking, or reduce stress in their lives. Too often, those good resolutions are abandoned after only a few weeks or months. Dix campus employees now have greater support at work to help them make and keep new year's resolutions to improve their health and wellness.

Celebrating national Healthy Weight Week, more than 500 Dix campus employees turned out on January 18 for a festive and fun health fair in the Haywood Gym. They sampled healthy snack items, danced the electric slide, and reduced stress with a neck massage and a laugh-filled magic show. At the Move More booth, over a hundred employees signed up for one of many Dix campus walking clubs to make physical activity a part of their regular work week. Thirty-eight vendors provided information on tobacco cessation, physical activity opportunities in the community, healthy food choices, and many other healthy lifestyle activities and resources. The State Health Plan provided employees an on-site opportunity to take a personal health risk assessment as well as learn more about their HealthSmart initiative for employees. This initiative includes a personal health coach service available 24 hours a day for all State Health Plan members.

A highlight of the Dix event was a health walk led by Secretary Carmen Hooker Odom. Despite a cold and windy afternoon, a large group of employees joined the Secretary for a half-mile walk on campus, the first in a series of weekly walks. Participants received pedometers and a copy of the new Dix campus walking map, which lays out six walking routes of different lengths (also available at www.eatsmartmovemorenc.com

Speaking to the group, the Secretary talked about DHHS workplace wellness efforts and Eat Smart, Move More…North Carolina, the statewide healthy eating and physical activity movement that helps people find ways to make simple but permanent lifestyle changes to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. The Secretary emphasized the important health benefits of even small and moderate amounts of physical activity on a weekly basis. She pointed to a new interactive web site, MyEatSmartMoveMore.com, that gives easy, helpful tips and tools for starting and maintaining a healthier lifestyle. It also features resources for North Carolinians who want to make healthy changes in their homes, preschools, schools, churches, worksites and communities.

The Dix health fair was part of the new DHHS Wellness collaborative initiative with the State Health Plan. Wellness committees from Dix campus agencies, led by Barbara Whitaker with DMA, organized the successful fair. The DHHS Wellness Director, Suzanna Young, observed that many health fairs are annual events that may motivate participants to make changes to improve their health, but they do not provide the ongoing support needed to help individuals make permanent lifestyle changes. The Dix campus health fair was different since it was the kickoff event for agency wellness programs that will provide ongoing support to help employees become more active during the work day and to have access in the work place to healthy snack and lunch choices, resources to help them quit tobacco use, and better ways to manage stress.

Leaving the fair, one employee shared that she had made a new year's resolution to walk 15 minutes every day. She said she knew exercise would help reduce her blood pressure and stress as well as give her more energy but, after only two weeks, she had stopped walking because of a long commute and having to rush home to care for her elderly mother. Like many employees, she realized that if the opportunity to exercise was not available at work, it would probably not happen. She signed up for the lunch-time walking club and said she thought the group support would help her be more active.

Other DHHS agencies also held kickoff events in the past month for their new employee wellness programs. On January 6, in extremely cold weather, 250 employees in the Albemarle building turned out for a lunch time wellness walk. Led by Stormy, the Carolina Hurricanes mascot, the 15-minute downtown walk was a fun and energizing event. Will Brown, Wellness Representative for DSS, plans to make walking groups a regular event for Albemarle employees, like the agencies on Dix campus are doing.