The Standard

Issue date: 10/5/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: Cassie Zapata

A healthier campus is the ultimate goal for the employee wellness program. Its variety of benefits and events open to all employees range from fiscal workshops to divorce support groups, hula-hooping to yoga instruction. For certain Missouri State faculty and staff there is also monetary incentives for program participation.

University-insured employees may receive "a decrease in health insurance premiums for 2008 by as much as $360 for the year" in exchange for participation in certain wellness program aspects, Sheila Bo-wen, employee wellness coordinator, said in an e-mail.

The national trend of rising health care costs as forced Missouri State to make a "proactive" change to their health insurance payment policies, according to Bowen. Starting Jan. 1, 2008 the university will stop paying an individual employee's entire health insurance premium by requiring a $30 monthly premium payment from insured employees.

Currently employees with health insurance through Missouri State compensate only for additional family members to be included in the policy.

Employee payment savings can be achieved in two ways if done by Nov. 1:

1. Be a non-smoker or a smoker attending a smoking-cessation program

2. Complete a health risk assessment survey

Each discount is valued at $15 per month and in due course, eliminates the individual employee's $30 monthly payment if both are submitted by the deadline.

St. John's Corporate Wellness Program supplies Missouri State with an electronic HRA survey to be completed on the Internet by employees with a private, individual wellness ID. The survey includes questions about "lifestyle behaviors," according to Bowen.

Stress levels, relaxation techniques, vegetable consumption, exercise habits and appointments for diagnostic testing were a few of the questions on the HRA survey completed by Missouri State reading education professor Beth Hurst.

Hurst, a non-smoker, skeptically completed the survey only to neutralize her $15 monthly premium payment.

"I do feel like it is a great invasion of privacy," Hurst said. "I did not enter the information about my family's health, family history, etc. I do not feel that is any business of the university."

The information recovered by St. John's will be reported to Missouri State only in bundled statistical data, therefore eliminating the risk of university employees being singled-out for the habits.

Statistical data supplied to Missouri State will guide the wellness program in a direction that will be most beneficial in improving employee health by allowing the university to pinpoint health risks and achievements among the university workforce.

The expansion of the HRA is already being included in university plans as next year, Bowen said the survey will include numbers for employee blood pressure, body mass index and cholesterol.

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