HIA Challenges Corporations To Make Wellness Priority

Improving your wellness doesn’t have to be an individual goal, but is being taken up by Hauppauge Industrial Association of Long Island’s member companies.

HIA-LI has challenged its more than 9,000 members to commit to making healthy lifestyle changes in 2011. It’s started a nine-week wellness challenge that sets goal for member companies employees to improve their wellness. 

“Optimum health is necessary for business people to reach and maintain their business goals at the highest levels. That’s why HIA-LI decided to offer the Wellness Challenge to our members – free of charge and in a spirit  of friendly competition,” said HIA-LI president Terri Alessi-Miceli.

Dr. Matthew Lewis, an enzyme nutritional specialist and chiropractor, co-chairs the HIA-LI’s Health Care committee that created the Wellness Challenge.  Lewis said wellness is a hot topic, given increasing health care costs and federal reforms, but a trend slow to build momentum on Long Island.

 “Wellness doesn’t have to cost a whole lot,” Lewis said. “I think that’s why you don’t see it on Long Island.” 

The nine-week program instructs participants to choose one new activity, or behavior aimed at improving their nutritional, physical or emotional health each week, while continuing with the changes they made.

“We gave them choices, so that based on their lifestyle they could pick something that would be easy for them, possible to do,” Lewis said. “We figured if people had more choice, then they are going to feel they made the decision.”

The first week’s nutritional goals included things such as making an effort to drink more water, which some participating companies said they appreciated while others said were too vague.

Now entering its third week, companies are still encouraged to sign up for online access to the Wellness Challenge’s website which has food recipes, recommendations and more specific instruction. Lewis instructed to start at the beginning.

If the Wellness Challenge is a success, it could be the beginning of a new trend on Long Island.

 “We look forward to this becoming an annual event among many other businesses and networking benefits we offer HIA-LI members,” Alessi-Miceli said.