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How to Add Sparkle & Pizzazz to Your Health Promotion Program
Kathy K. Cash, RN, CHPD
ISBN: 9781570251689
194 pages 7"x9"
The ultimate resource for health promotion professionals

“If you build it they will come” does not apply to health education. It is common for great wellness programs to go unattended. This causes great frustration for novice and experienced managers alike. How to Add Sparkle and Pizzazz to Your Health Promotion Program focuses on administrative and programming strategies that create a structure and culture that supports each individual program and packs in participants.

Some of these strategies are so simple that they require only one or two paragraphs to explain. These suggestions appear in the “Quick Tips” chapter at the beginning of each section. Complex strategies receive more explanation in the subsequent chapters. Kathy often includes variations on the activities, as well as cross-references to activities and ideas in other chapters of the book. You can implement virtually all the ideas with a modest working budget.

The chapters have been grouped in eight broad sections.

Raising Awareness, Changing Behavior, and Gaining Support

No health promotion program is effective without a strong support structure. Integral to this are creative marketing strategies, broad-based incentive programs, and strong management support. Kathy assumes that health promotion managers know their target audiences and are willing to customize programs and services based on their diversity. But, if you don’t know your audience, don’t worry! The next section includes strategies for learning about their needs.

Innovative Program Structure and Design

Decisions on what program to offer and how to do so should be strongly influenced by the customer. The customer is not just those attending the class, but also those who hired you, who hold the purse strings, and who manage your customers. Customer-driven programs are actually easier to manage. If you truly listen to them, your customers will give you the programming answers you seek. Strategies for becoming customer-driven are included in this section, as well as specific tools to influence the learning process and effect long-term behavior change.

Health Fairs

What is your desired outcome? Health fair organizers don’t ask this question often enough. As a result, health fairs become a one size fits all event, and, consequently, fit no one. This section defines nine types of health fairs. Health promotion managers select a target audience or specific community problem and then build a fair to address that need with the necessary depth to actually effect a desired healthy outcome or behavior change.

Fitness Programming

Fitness can be fun! This section has a wealth of ideas for turning mundane group fitness activities into high-energy social events that keep even the couch potatoes coming back for more. It is important that your programs not appeal just to the jocks. Many of the activities play off our natural competitive natures but are structured to include people of all physical capabilities.

Nutrition Programming

It would be easy to eat well if we are only at home and had no outside influences on our choices. This section provides strategies for encouraging healthy eating within the environment of today’s average working person. It also gives easy-to-implement ideas for increasing awareness of healthy food selections and preparation.

Maternal/Child Programming

Many health habits learned at very early ages carry through well into adulthood. It’s never too soon to begin instilling healthy ideas in children. Enjoyable and appealing programs and activities for preschoolers, elementary-age, preteens, and teenagers are described, as well as two excellent programs targeting new mothers’ needs.

Programs and Activities for Healthy Aging

Issues of primary concern for today’s aging populations are often not found in traditional health promotion programs. That is not to say that the traditional health promotion messages are not important. But integrating programs addressing the more personal needs of aging audiences will help capture this underserved population. This section provides programs and activities to address three often overlooked areas: stages of life, encouraging independence and safety, and staying connected.

Resources

The resource section provides a compendium of organizations and companies that provide valuable resources and services for the harried heath promotion manager.

What Others Are Saying:

Practical and effective ideas. A great resource!

Larry S. Chapman, MPG
Chairman and Senior Consultant
Summex Corporation

A valuable resource for program managers who wish to add creativity and pizzazz to their program offerings.

George J. Pfeiffer, MSE< FAWHP
President, The WorkCare Group, Inc.

Kathy Cash has put together a large collection of very creative ideas for traditional health promotion programming. Her ideas are broad enough to encompass programs with large budgets and those with little budget at all. Health promotion professionals who feel they have done it all and are running out of ways to be creative will surely find this wealth of ideas a shot in the arm.

Donna Sullivan
Wellness Director
Conoco, Inc.

How to Add Sparkle & Pizzazz to Your Health Promotion Program
$29.95
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