This is Episode 1 of our podcast series on technology that is radically changing our idea of worker health solutions. Here, we focus on Virtual Reality. Pretty neat, huh?
The Healthy Work Agenda is designed to promote understanding, discussions, and actions that advance “healthy work.” (See Principles of Healthy Work.) Created to support the Healthy Work Campaign, the Agenda is a set of actions to improve the quality of jobs and promote “healthy work.” Those actions are part of an effort to encourage “thinking …
The Center for Workforce Health and Performance (CWHP) will study the outcomes of employee populations after pharmacogenomics are facilitated, case managed, and applied in high-risk, highly complex plan members.
For smokers, lung cancer is an ever-present fear. In 2013, about 160,000 people in the United States will die from lung cancer. Smoking is the #1 risk factor for lung cancer, and quitting smoking is the best way to lower the risk. Smoking is also a risk factor for other cancers and health problems, including heart and lung disease. We now have a secondary prevention strategy, annual screening with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT scans) that has the potential to greatly reduce lung cancer deaths.
A project in Alabama takes a down-to-earth approach in teaching patients to think differently and cope more effectively with chronic pain. It may alleviate depression, too.
The big “C” – cancer — can cause panic and feelings of helplessness. These feelings, however, often are shared beyond the patients being screened or treated for the disease. Employers often are unsure of how to help their employees who have been diagnosed with cancer and desire to remain at work during treatment or return to work after care.
Most current approaches to patient care are focused on patients’ symptoms, limitations, and weaknesses. This approach can guide medical treatment, but it does not unleash the transformative power of people’s positive personal strengths that can help patients to live a fulfilling life despite having multiple chronic illnesses. A growing body of research points to the potential of bringing patient-identified personal strengths (PIPS) into illness management to achieve better patient-centered outcomes.
The mortality rate among people with serious mental illness (SMI) is two to three times that of the general population (DeHert et al., 2011), meaning that those with a serious mental illness die, on average, 25 years earlier than those without a SMI (Parks et al., 2006). There is evidence that these deaths are largely attributed to preventable medical conditions, many of which are more common in the SMI population.
