IBM employee-wellness program shows some success for kids

Reuters: "In 2008, IBM launched an Internet-based 'children's rebate program' that let employees and their families choose from a selection of goals revolving around healthy eating, group physical activity, reduced 'screen time' and positive parental role-modeling. A $150 check was offered as incentive to complete the 12-week program. … More than 22,000 employees signed on to participate, representing about half of all employees with children covered by IBM's health plan." About 12,000 completed the program and received the rebate. 

"The benefits of such an intervention also extend to the employer. For example, children who are obese and have type 2 diabetes incur five times the health care costs of a child that is neither obese nor diabetic, noted" lead researcher Martin Sepulveda of the IBM Corporation in Somers. "He added that unhealthy kids also substantially slow a parent's productivity" (Peeples, 10/3).

USA Today: The study is from the current issue of the journal Pediatrics. "Families completing the program reported that they were doing more physical activity together as a family, ate a greater proportion of healthful meals and spent less sedentary screen time. People liked achieving goals for the program that they had wanted to accomplish with their families, anyway, says Joyce Young, a preventive-medicine doctor who is an IBM well-being director and one of the study's authors" (Hellmich, 10/3).

---

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.