Wellness Liaisons Wanted

Wellness Liaisons Wanted

By Alexis BlueUniversity Communications
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University of Arizona e-mail inboxes are flooded with messages every day, which can make it tricky to pick out which ones are important. As part of an effort to get health and wellness information to the UA's 11,000-plus employees, designated wellness liaisons are serving as middlemen, choosing the messages that their colleagues would find beneficial and then passing them along. 

The wellness liaison program, part of the UA's Life & Work Connections Worksite Wellness Program, was initiated about a year ago by Nancy Rogers, a registered dietitian and coordinator of the Worksite Wellness and Health Promotion program.

The goal is to designate individuals in units across campus to help get health messages to employees in their respective departments. Rogers said she hopes identifying a central person responsible for health information distribution in a department will help build a "culture of wellness" within individual campus communities.

Rogers sends messages containing research-based information on health and wellness to liaisons about once a week. They then decide which messages to forward to their colleagues. 

In addition to forwarding e-mail messages, wellness liaisons may help in scheduling wellness screenings for their departments and in getting information out to employees on Life & Work Connections offerings, such as presentations, child and elder care resources, employee assistance counseling and more.

Currently, there are 118 volunteer UA liaisons on the main campus, at the Arizona Health Sciences Center, in Sierra Vista and Phoenix and in Arizona counties affiliated with UA Cooperative Extension. Rogers would like to recruit even more.

"There can be a real satisfaction when you provide those you work with with information that can be helpful to their health," Rogers said.

An informational meeting for existing wellness liaisons and those interested in becoming liaisons will be held Sept. 15 at noon in the Student Union Memorial Center's Ventana Room.

Wellness liaison Sharonne Meyerson, administrative secretary in the department of English, regularly forwards Rogers' messages to her fellow employees, who often express thanks for the valuable information.

"It's really good stuff. It covers everything," Meyerson said. "It's really practical stuff that's just good to know."

From information on topics like diet and exercise, stroke, body image, stress management and more, the messages are aligned with the Worksite Wellness Program's mission to "enhance the health of The University of Arizona's faculty, appointed professionals and staff by providing research-informed services that promote health and reduce the risk of chronic disease," Rogers said.

Rogers compiles e-mails based on information from sources like medical and scientific journals, aiming to squelch misinformation employees might have heard from other media sources.

E-mails sent to employees from sources within their own department often get more attention than those coming from the outside, Meyerson noted. "When you start getting e-mails on big lists, people tend not to look at those."

Wellness liaison Jane Barth, coordinator of data management in the College of Medicine, said she feels the program offers a valuable service to employees, particularly those who might be struggling with job-related stress.

"A lot of the positions here are stressful, and consume a lot of our lives," she said. "We're here more than we're at home and we need to spend some time on ourselves."

Rogers said most UA employees fall into one of three categories: those who are healthy, those who are at risk for disease but aren't yet showing symptoms, and those who already have a chronic disease. Reliable information on wellness and disease prevention is valuable to all three groups, she said.

For more information on the wellness liaison program, or to register for the Sept. 15 information session, call 621-2493.

If you don't have an active wellness liaison, or want to access additional health and wellness information, a number of resources are available on the Worksite Wellness Web site.

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