ACSM's Worksite Health Promotion Manual: A Guide to Building and Sustaining Healthy Worksites

ACSM’s Worksite Health Promotion Manual is the most practical resource of its kind, giving students and professionals alike the most useful information available to start, run, and evaluate worksite programs.

Editor Carolyn Cox, PhD, CHES, expertly compiles dozens of proven and implemented ideas and examples from 30 of the top practitioners, researchers, and leaders in the field, making the manual a day-to-day resource for working health promotion practitioners. The hands-on text stresses the importance of making worksite health promotion relevant to today’s top business leaders in order to ensure its long-term success.

Worksite health promotion traditionally has taken a back seat to business and medicine, in part because of consumer attitudes: People don’t want to do what they should. For the minority who do, the benefits take time, sometimes years, to achieve. ACSM’s Worksite Health Promotion Manual predicts that the profession will only grow and flourish if practitioners successfully relate their work to business objectives and medical outcomes, to consumers and corporations, and to everyday performance as well as long-term health.

The five-part text features easy-to-read sections that allow readers to find specific information quickly. Other features include the following:
· Lists of resources that professionals can use to maximize program efficiency and cost effectiveness
· Examples of best practices from the profession
· Icons that highlight important principles in each section
· A comprehensive appendix that contains 15 forms designed to guide businesses through various aspects of worksite health promotion
· Popular Web sites for health promotion

Part I, "Building a Strong Foundation," advocates that all interventions and planning be based on proven theory, encouraging practitioners to foster more partnerships to be successful.

Part II, "Operation Processes That Work," reviews the four cornerstones of an effective health promotion program and their interdependency: needs assessment and evaluation, health culture development, effective interventions, and relapse prevention.

Part III, "Development Strategies for Mature Programs," offers current resources to help practitioners revitalize and continue to develop existing programs.

Part IV, "Reengineering for Mature Programs," challenges programs to find and use a variety of tools and processes to break away from the status quo, ultimately improving the creative and innovative process.

Part V, "The Twenty-First Century Challenge," presents viewpoints of other movements that are influencing health promotion.

ACSM’s Worksite Health Promotion Manual is an ideal reference for professionals who are setting up, running, and evaluating on-the-job programs. It’s the most practical, hands-on tool available for worksite health promotion practitioners, complete with real-world case studies and objectives to help with healthy worksite promotion.