What is a culture of health? David Martin, executive director of Massachusetts Health Council, sets out to answer that question during his presentation of the same name.
According to Martin, a culture of health prioritizes healthy lifestyles, wellness and preventative care so that people and the communities they live in can thrive; the cost of medical care is reduced; and the burden of illness, disease and disability is lessened for everyone.
“What it means is thinking about how everything that takes place in an environment — in this case, a workplace — and how that impacts health,” Martin says.
The first aspect is about considering how the design of the environment, from scheduling to layout to availability of certain items, impacts an employee’s health. Second, Martin says employers should think about how to give employees access to healthy things.
“What you want to try to do is make the healthy choice the easy choice,” Martin says. “That can be as simple as discouraging people from drinking sugary drinks by making sure you have free water available in the workplace, so they don’t feel the need to make the choice to drink something unhealthy.”
Education also plays a role in this, Martin says. Most people, after all, are likely aware that soda is bad for them. But some don’t realize sports drinks tend to be high in sugar..
“A lot of versions of Vitamin Water actually have a lot of sugar in them,” Martin says, as an example.
During Martin’s presentation, he references John Snow, who worked to determine how cholera was spread and is considered to be “the father of modern epidemiology.” Martin says Snow was one of the first people to be credited for the thought that an environment is what makes us sick.
“It’s the things around us that contribute to our health or lack of health,” Martin says. “Your zip code is more important than your genetic code, in terms of your health status.”
Martin also points to the difference between medicine and health.
“Once you are already ill in some way, medicine makes you better,” Martin says. But to him, health is all the things that lead up to that point.
To try and create a culture of health, the Massachusetts Health Council is leading an educational campaign on sugary drinks, connecting people to their local school wellness committee and hosting regional conferences on health crises.
For employers, however, he suggests two things: hiding the sugary drinks and educating employees.
“Education is great,” he says. “For instance, employers could have posters on the wall that show people how much sugar is in various drinks.”
But education only works to a certain point.
“You should look to try to change the design of the environment,” Martin says. “Educate people, but then make sure sugary drinks are the harder choice for people to get.”
He suggested making water, flavored water and unsweetened teas available. He also suggested conducting employee surveys asking what flavors people would like to have available. This can create an employee buy-in to the idea.
“We don’t want to just tell people what to do,” Martin says. “We want to inform people about what the options are and then make sure we give them the tools to make a healthy choice.”
Employers, take the lead.
