Employer Health Solutions: Wellness & Resiliency Programs at Ohio State

Wellness is not just the absence of illness — it’s an approach to health that considers the impact of daily choices and activities on our physical, mental and social well-being with a goal of helping people develop and maintain habits that improve their quality of life.

An effective wellness program should be flexible enough to address influencing factors, such as healthy eating, active living and physical activity, emotional well-being, weight management, good sleep habits, mindfulness and social support.

An additional aspect of wellness is resiliency, and it’s an area where Ohio State has committed significant research and program development. Simply defined, resiliency is a person’s ability to “bounce back” from adversity, and it’s what helps people adapt, accept change and move forward with determination.

More than a nice gesture

Promoting wellness and resiliency can be a gamechanger for your entire organization, and certainly for each individual employee or student.

• Only 8% of Americans undergo routine preventive screenings.
• A National Institutes of Health research study found that people who maintained five healthy lifestyle habits (related to diet, physical activity, moderate alcohol consumption, not smoking and normal weight) lived more than a decade longer than those who didn’t.
• Mental health disorders are experienced by 53 million U.S. adults annually, with the most common related to anxiety.
• According to a 2023 report on workforce attitudes toward mental health:
  • 87% of employees say they feel dread at least once a month, and nearly 50% do so weekly. Among leadership, the problem is even worse, with 55% of executives and 59% of CEOs reporting dread every week.
  • 97% of employees say traumatic events have significantly impacted their mental health.

If you’re not sure which programs to select, we can start with an engagement survey to help you identify areas of opportunity and prioritize next steps to improve health and decrease stress, anxiety and burnout.

Health risk assessment and education

An effective wellness program helps people identify physical and mental health risks and develop strategies to reduce them. To this end, Ohio State offers a broad range of health screening and education initiatives in every medical discipline.

Whether you want on-site or virtual programming or readily available options in the community, we can develop wellness plans that match your goals, including:

• Biometrics – health screenings, including BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and A1C (blood sugar)
• Health risk assessments – to help evaluate long-term risks related to injury, chronic conditions or serious disease
• Health coaching – support for individuals or groups wanting to establish or maintain healthier habits
• Health education webinars and onsite presentations – addressing any physical, behavioral or mental health topic, including popular subjects like stress reduction, nutrition, weight loss, better sleep, conflict resolution and fitness

Featured programs

As an academic medical center, Ohio State has an active research program that drives continual innovation in the areas of wellness and resiliency. The result is proprietary programs that target specific physical and mental health risk factors that you can offer to groups or individuals.