**FTS HHS ACF**

**Moderator: Allison Hertel**

**January 16, 2008**

**1:00 pm CT**

Coordinator: Good afternoon and thank you all for holding. Your lines
have been placed on a listen-only mode until the question and answer
portion of today's conference.

I would like to remind all parties, today's call is being recorded. If
you have any objections to please disconnect at this time.

I would now like to turn the call over to Miss (Ally) Hertel. Thank you.
You may begin.

Allison Hertel: Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone.
Thank you for your patience getting on the phone. I know there are at
least 45 phone callers out there and hopefully you have people with you
in your office.

Just a couple logistics -- one is, there is a PowerPoint presentation
that goes with today's call. If you do not have a copy of that and would
like one, feel free to call Annelle Bogus in our office. Her phone
number is 206-615-3648 or you can send her a quick email at
annelle.bogus@acf.hhs.gov and she will send you those materials right
now.

Just to start off, in December about half of the Region 10 grantees
participated in the I Am Moving, I Am Learning training here in Seattle
and the program staff that participated just ran away charged and
enthusiastic about integrating physical activity and nutrition into the
program environment.

In some of the evaluations, people expressed interest in getting more
ideas and strategies on how to do staff health and so this caused
really, an opportunity to do a presentation and then provide some time
for dialogue and discussion about ways that you might do staff health
and support staff wellness in your program.

So I thought we'd start with something to think about. One, is that it's
a brand new year and so virtually you're all out there and it's really
hard for me to do this without seeing you but I thought we could kind of
do a virtual hand raise with people that are in your office or with you
and raise your hand if you developed a New Year's resolution that has to
do with health. And if you're like the majority of Americans, your
resolution might be to spend more time with your family, tame the bulge,
get fit, stop smoking, or enjoy life more but here we are back into our
work routine and it's so easy to get sidetracked.

For example, your work day might start with a two-hour management
meeting where someone has brought donuts, croissants and coffee. You sit
there for two hours and you leave frustrated and overwhelmed with the
amount of work that you were just assigned. You go back to your desk.
You find 28 unread emails, three urgent phone messages and are
interrupted by a teacher who has an emergency with a child in the
classroom.

By the time you get back to your desk, it is 12:30, you're starving. You
run out, get some takeout and consume the whole thing. Oh goodness, it's
now 1 pm and it's time for that staffing on three very challenging
children. That ends up lasting until 3 pm. Before you know it's 4
o'clock. You've only read four -- five of those emails. You've got four
phone calls to make and you are wiped out.

If this is your typical work day, it's no wonder that your New Year's
resolution to get healthy, take breaks, exercise and eat right can get
thrown out the window. This is our reality in Head Start, often.
Hopefully, this call will help you to come up with ways to support your
staff and to support the resolutions.

I hope to provide you with some strategies to focus some of your
creative energy on providing a supportive environment that embraces
wellness with your program. And while you might not be able to implement
every idea that's presented here, I challenge you to think of one or two
ways that you can embrace wellness not only for your staff but also for
yourself.

Each of the slides are labeled with a number and so I'm going to try to
refer to which slide I'm on throughout the presentation. The first slide
gives an overview of the agenda. About half way through we're going to
have a Virtual Wellness Break which will be facilitated by my colleague,
(Alison Laughlin). Just a quick way to get you moving. If you do
conference calls with your staff, this might be one way you can do
wellness activities from afar.

At the conclusion of the presentation, we'll open the phone line for
questions or comments about ways that you have implemented staff
wellness activities in your program. And please take care of yourself
during the call. If you need to, get up. Walk around the table. Stretch
your legs. Get a drink of water. Eat your lunch. And a reminder, you
don't have to do everything. Small steps.

Slide number 2 is Healthy People 2010 Goal. Healthy People 2010 is a
framework for prevention for the nation. It's designed to identify the
most significant preventable threats to our health and to establish
national goals to reduce those threats.

One of the goals is around health promotion. The goal is that 50% of
worksites employing 50 or more persons will provide programs to prevent
or reduce employee stress. At this point, nationally we are far from
reaching this goal. Most Head Start programs employ more than 50 people
so this is something for your employer to consider.

Here are a few questions. When you think of a healthy work place, what
does that mean to you? How often do you feel stress during the work day
and does your program -- does your employer offer an active program to
prevent or reduce stress? How do we as Head Start programs develop a
healthy climate in our work place? It's an opportunity where healthy
behaviors can be supported but they can also be threatened by the day to
day things that we experience.

Before we go any further, I want to give a little bit of background on
health promotion. Slide 3 gives a definition of what health promotion
is. It's the science and art of helping people change their lifestyle to
move towards the state of optimal health. Head Starts can support that
by facilitating some efforts, including enhancing awareness. You can
help change behaviors and you can create an environment that supports
good health practices.

Of these components, research shows that supportive environments will
have the greatest impact on producing lasting change. People spend at
least 8 hours a day in the work environment. Some people spend 10 hours
a day. So think about the role that your work environment plays in
supporting and producing lasting change around health promotion and
moving towards the state of optimal health.

The next slide talks about Health Education. Think about the role that
your work environment can play in helping staff identify health needs
and priorities for their own personal health, obtaining more information
and resources relating to health and wellness and mobilizing into
action.

Again, you are encouraged to create an environment where there are
supports set up for both individuals and within the organizational
structure so that people can make their own informed and voluntary
decisions around healthy behaviors.

You may ask why an organization wants to play a role in this and what
benefit does it really have? We understand the six dimensions of
wellness and how it correlates to optimal health. We can better
understand the role that they play in designing a worksite health
promotion program.

Slide 5 talks about The Six Dimensions of Wellness. There's Social
wellness, which has to do with communities, families and friends;
Occupational and Environmental; Spiritual, which is love and hope and
charity; Physical which has to do with fitness, nutrition, medical and
control of substance abuse. I think that's where we often think of
health. There's Intellectual Health, which has to do with education,
career development and Emotional Health, care for emotional crises,
stress management.

Wellness is the condition of well-being beyond the absence of disease.
It's really building a level of optimal health for people and it's going
to be different and unique for each person and I think that's really
important to consider in the work environment.

The next slide is Slide 6 and it helps provide some information as to
Why To Focus On Staff Health. Organizations are generally looking for
results in these four areas. They're looking to support employee health,
to reduce health care costs, to improve employee morale and productivity
and to reduce absenteeism.

According to the Wellness Councils of America, the 6 key reasons on your
slide represent why to develop a worksite health promotion program. For
example, in 2003 the United States spent over \$1.66 trillion in health
care, much of which can be linked to people's health habits.

Preventable illnesses make up for 70% of all illness-related costs and
according to a recent national poll, 78% of Americans described their
jobs as stressful. This all has an impact on employee health. It has an
impact on costs that employers are paying toward health insurance. It
impacts absenteeism and it impacts productivity.

On the next slide, there are a few facts on Health and Productivity. On
average, United States employers spend over -- it costs them over
\$1,685 per employee per year in productivity losses related to personal
and family health problems. That's over \$225 billion annually.

Worksite health promotion programs have been shown to reduce sick leave
absenteeism by 28%, to reduce health care costs by 26% and to reduce
worker's compensation claims by 30%. There's a huge savings when we do
health promotion programs. And while this information focuses on really
large employers that have spent millions of dollars on health promotion
programs, there are simple, smaller ways that we all can help improve
productivity and employee wellness.

The next slide is just a fun little quote that I found in a resource
that will be showed later and it says that the only exercise some people
get is jumping to conclusions, running down their friends, sidestepping
responsibility and pushing their luck.

Slide number 9 talks about how to -- How Do We Implement a Wellness
Program? As with any program, when you implement something new, it's
important that you go through a process. And what is described in this
slide might represent the process that you go through to develop and
implement a wellness program.

The reality is that this takes a lot of time. You can spend weeks
developing a wellness committee, gathering information, developing a
program plan, implementing it, testing it, revising it but at the same
time, we can make some simple changes in our programs that can have an
immediate impact on staff wealth -- staff health.

I'm going to give you a few quick and practical things that you can do
today, tomorrow and in the next week to enhance staff wellness. From
there, when and if you have more time, maybe this summer, you can focus
on developing a more comprehensive approach to staff wellness.

One quick note is that I did give you some resources in my email. One of
which is a healthy workplace survey. That might be a starting point to
do an assessment of your program and your work environment to see how
you rate on a scale of wellness.

Slide number 10 talks about Choosing Priorities. So as a program -- as a
program staff or management staff, you need to make the decision as to
how much you feel you can do right now. How much do you really have
control over, versus how much does the Human Resources department or the
director or the larger grantee need to be involved in your staff
wellness program?

Think about those short and long-term solutions and hopefully you'll get
some resources that will stimulate your creative thinking and will lead
to positive outcomes and healthier staff.

You may look at all of these priorities as important, so you might
choose a sampling of each of them, whether it's focusing on the disease
and illness prevention or health education or really looking at some of
the environmental things in your program.

It's important to take into consideration how to build your priorities
to include the six dimensions of wellness into each of them, such as
Spiritual Health, Intellectual Health, Social Health and Emotional
Health.

The next slide focuses on Disease and Illness Prevention. Here are a few
ways that you could do health promotion programs targeting disease and
illness. You could set up something where you're encouraging staff to
get preventive and primary health care. Maybe you have a staff health
policy that requires them to get a physical exam every two years or
three years. You could offer health screenings in your programs, whether
it's a diabetes screening or doing blood pressure on a regular basis,
cholesterol screenings. You could do Body Mass Index or teach staff how
to do it for themselves.

You could offer vaccinations for your program staff. You could partner
with a health department and have them come in and do flu shots annually
for your teachers. You could provide information on age-appropriate
screenings and tests. For example, the right hand visual is General
Screenings and Immunizations for Women and it talks about different ages
and what we should be having as we go in for our annual exams. There's
also one of these available on that Website for men.

And then, you could also provide flex time for staff to get their
medical and dental exams and allow them to have a flexible schedule
where they have some freedom to go do what they need to with their
health.

The next slide talks about Health Promotion Activities. One idea, is to
implement a 10,000 steps a day program. A lot of people have pedometers
now or maybe you could apply for a small grant to get pedometers or just
see if people will buy their own. And you could encourage and have
challenges around people getting 10,000 steps a day.

You could develop staff bulletin boards, have an article in a
newsletter, post flyers throughout the program environment that focuses
on a different health topic. If you're lucky, you might work for an
organization that could provide discounts to health clubs, provide
prenatal classes to pregnant staff, provide smoking cessation or tobacco
cessation classes or do other health-related events that really are
health promotion.

You could provide support to staff to prevent burnout. Think in our line
of work, we often hear that staff get burned out and it's really
important to do some things that are built into your programs to help
prevent that. Maybe you offer support groups or even getting people out
walking will have an effect on preventing burnout.

I think we often do Family Health Fairs for the families in our
programs. We'll do Family Nights that focus on health. Well, what about
doing something like that just for staff, where you're incorporating
family health topics that are important to them in their personal lives
but you're doing it as a way to do health promotion for your staff. I
read one idea that talked about developing a staff relaxation room. I
can just envision what that would look like.

A lot of these activities really support staff health. Think about the
impacts that doing something like this might have in the longer term on
absenteeism or lowering health care costs if we're helping staff get
healthy.

The next slide focuses on Health Education Opportunities. We often do a
CPR training and a First-Aid training for staff but let's think about
some other ways that we can do health education such as a training on
employee health issues that are related to disease and illness
prevention; classes on Child Safety and Parenting or Labor and Delivery
or Child Development for staff who are parents that might not have a
Child Development background.

We could have Health and Nutrition information available and accessible
to staff so that if they're not comfortable asking about it, they still
would have opportunity to get the information.

At the I Am Moving, I Am Learning training, we had serving size displays
during meal times to talk about what really does a serving look like? So
you could have a visual during staff meetings that shows a plate of food
and what a real serving would look like.

How many of you have staff trainings on your employee benefits and
really understanding what is available to you as an employee of the
agency with which you work? You might have trainings on Diabetes
Education, on Cancer Prevention. You might have an education on how to
begin an exercise program if you don't even know where to start.

On the next slide, we're talking about some Organizational Norms That
Are Related to Healthy Behaviors. There are things that we know that are
in our control and there's things that are out of our control, related
to our organizations and the cultures within. The question is, how can
we play a role in creating an organizational culture that embraces
wellness.

What does our employee benefits package look like? Do we have health
insurance for our family -- our employees and their families? Do we have
an employee assistance program where staff can access support for a
mental health services? Do we offer staff incentives to participate in
wellness programs and wellness activities? We all love incentives. Even
if we can't afford it with financial incentives, we could offer bike
helmets or gift certificates or solicit donations from our community to
help embrace and encourage employees to participate in healthy
activities.

I think one quick thing we could do is look at how we do our staff
meetings and our trainings. Do we have healthy food and beverage
options? If you offer cookies or brownies or donuts, do you still have
fruit and yogurt as an alternative for people that may want to make a
healthier choice? Do you offer stretch and movement breaks -- an
opportunity for staff to get up and move -- or are you sitting on your
tush for a good hour or two hours?

And on an emotional and social level, are the meetings that we have, are
they supportive and collaborative? Are they open to dialogue and
questions where you really feel like you are a part of the
decision-making process?

Additionally, maybe we could look at offering fitness and nutrition
classes and trainings for our staff. Do we have opportunities to do
physical activities during our breaks and our lunches or do we even have
a break or a lunch? Think about your vending machines in your programs.
What beverage and foods do you have in them? Is there a way to get rid
of the regular soda and put juice or water or other beverages in there
that might be a healthier option?

And then, how about a flexible work environment? Do you have
telecommuting options or flexible work days or the flexibility to leave
and go to a doctor's appointment through the day?

And then the last area is Environmental Health. And I don't know if we
always think about Environmental Health when we think about a worksite
health promotion program, but there's a lot of ways to support and
promote health -- staff health, that are related to the environment in
which we work.

It's a fact that 80% of people experience back pain at some point in
their lives. How many of you, including myself as -- and as I'm asking
this, are slouching right now in your chair? And I bet we're all sitting
up straight now. Think about your office chair; your computer screen.
Are you hunching over? Are you squinting to see your screen?

Have you ever thought about bringing in an ergonomic specialist or
someone who might be able to look at your work environment and really
offer some quick solutions to promote better posture or less straining
on your eyes?

Have you thought about -- we often do accident reports for the kids in
our program, but what about for staff? You look at where accidents are
happening or injuries are happening and looking at safety issues that
are related to those that might lead to worker's compensation claims. So
how can we prevent future accidents from happening?

Have you ever done proper lifting demonstrations where you learn how to
properly lift a box or a child or move things in your program? Think
about Going Green. I think that's kind of the big term right now.
There's Going Green and looking at the cleaning products we use and the
impact it has -- they have on our program.

Looking at your policies relating to staff, you probably have a staff
health policy. You probably have a tobacco-free policy. What other
policies or philosophies or procedures do you have that really embrace
and support staff wellness?

At this point, I'm going to take a pause and we're going to do a quick
Virtual Wellness Break. So, (Alison) I'm going to turn it over to you
for a minute.

(Alison Laughlin): Thanks (Ali). Good morning, everybody. We're going to
do a short stretch movement break together and we're going to do some
stretches that we can do while sitting at your desk or they could also
be used for a wellness break during a meeting when people are sitting in
a chair.

So you - I'd like you all to be sitting in a chair with both feet flat
on the floor. It'd help if you hands are free, so if you have a headset
or can go on speakerphone, now is a good time to do that.

This is our first telephone wellness break. It was a challenge to find
things we could do over the phone. So I hope you'll all join in, even
though we can't see you. Sometimes I think that's a good thing on a
phone conference.

I'll lead you with my voice and the instructions are also on Slide 16.
So remember, as with all activities, listen to your body and stop if it
hurts or if it doesn't seem wise.

Is everybody ready? Sit up straight in your chair with both feet flat on
the floor. Look straight ahead. And now slowly, reach around behind
yourself with your right hand and grasp the top right-hand corner of
your chair with your right hand. You can bend your elbow. And the
further away from the back of the seat you are, the more intense the
stretch. So get yourself comfortable with that hand holding to the back
of your chair and then complete the stretch by moving your left hand as
close as possible to your right hand. Stretch as far as you can and hold
it for 15 seconds. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

Good. Now, let's do the other side. Taking your left hand, grasp the top
right-hand corner of your chair with your right hand and your other hand
as close as possible to your right hand and stretch, holding it. Five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen. You can work up to repeating that five times on each side, but
just for demonstration, we'll just do it once.

So now, move your chair a little bit away from your desk so you have
room to stretch and interlock your fingers and turn your palms outward
and extend your arms away from your body as far as you can. Keep your
back straight, and your arms parallel to the table or the desk. Now, bow
your head slightly. Listen to your neck. Count to five. One, two, three,
four, five and then lift your head back up slowly.

Let's do that one more time. With your fingers interlocked, palms faced
outward, your hands extending away, dip your head down slowly \-- one,
two, three, four, five \-- and then lift it back up slowly.

How did that feel? Those stretches aren't vigorous activity but they get
your body moving and your blood flowing, stretching your muscles and is
an important part of staying active in order to maintain a healthy
weight. And wellness breaks help you feel alert and focused.

What we showed you was two of the chair's -- two of the five chair
stretches from the We Can program. We Can energize our parents. It's a
parent program leaders guide and we've given you the links there. It has
three other wellness breaks you can use yourself or with staff or
parents and it also has lots of great activities and good nutrition
exercises that you can use.

That's the end of our Virtual Wellness Break. Back to you, Ali.

Allison Hertel: Thank you, (Alison). Okay. We are going to move on to
Slide 17 which just is a little visual and really the question is, how
do we develop a program that meets the needs of all of our employees? I
think often we get this idea that we're going to do this one thing,
everyone's going to participate and love it. And the reality is that our
staff are at different stages of change and really not sure how much
they want to participate in things.

Slide 18 just gives you a couple questions to think about and, you know,
how do you develop a program that meets the needs of staff? What do you
do when you have some staff that are really excited and others that are
so disinterested and don't really want to change behaviors and are
asking for the -- where the donuts are when you put the fruit out. And
how does -- how do you make a worksite wellness program that meets the
needs of all your staff?

Just going to spend a minute talking about stages of change and where
you staff fall within the five aspects of the stages of change and how
you can -- how your staff health promotion program can support that.

If you have staff that are in the Pre-Contemplation stage, there is no
intention to change their behavior. They might not even be aware that
they have a "problem" or that there is an issue and that they need to
change. So a way to work with these staff is to provide and put posters
in the staff room \-\-- it's really about raising awareness. And doing
tastings of different foods that are prepared in a healthy way or
providing more options of vegetables so that they can try new foods.

If you have staff in a Contemplation stage, these people are aware of a
problem. They know that there is something going on that's not right and
they're thinking about overcoming it but they have not yet made that
commitment to take actions. So for that, you might have pictures of easy
steps you can take to be healthy. You might have models of fatty foods
or other models that they can touch and see and you could help raise
more awareness. Sometimes you'll see public health messaging out there
that uses fear tactics messages, where you see the story of people that
became very ill and sick as a result of a certain health behavior that
they have.

In Preparation, individuals in this stage really intend on taking action
and they might say they're going to take action in the next month. So
those are the people that are, "By golly, on January 1, I'm going to
start that new way of eating that's healthy." But they have not
successfully taken action in the past. So for these people, it's really
about getting a buddy and making a commitment to someone and writing
that action plan and setting a date.

For people that are In Action, people are modifying their behaviors,
their experiences and their environments in order to overcome their
problems. They are the people that have written up contracts, that are
excited to start that daily walk around the park. And so you want to
create an environment that really reinforces their behavior change.

And if you have staff that are in a Maintenance phase, maybe they have
successfully lost weight or they have decided and have successfully been
taking an hour lunch break where they're getting 30 minutes of walking
in, for them you want to really provide a supportive environment and
continue to do the same things where their alternative and new behaviors
are being supported as a program.

The next slide is just a few different examples of posters that you can
use to reach all staff -- of -- regardless of where they're at. Just a
couple facts about how to eat smart at work or using the stairs instead
of riding an elevator.

The next couple slides, starting on Slide 21, provide 10 things -- and
this is just off the top of my head -- that you can do today relating to
worksite wellness. I'm guilty of the first one. For three years, I had a
candy dish at my desk and it's no longer there. So how many of you have
a candy dish at your desk or in your office? Removing it or research
even shows if it's not visible, if it has a lid and it's covered and
people can't see what's in it, you're less likely to eat the candy.

You could add a staff bulletin board that encourages physical activity,
healthy nutrition choices, or choose another topic that might be of
interest for you right now. You could try to set up a meeting with your
director right now to discuss worksite wellness and where you want to go
with it. You could research one of the Websites that's going to be
mentioned next. You could add a walking break to your Outlook calendar
and set up a reminder system and take that break every day and get
outside and walk.

On the next slide, it gives five more. You could put up signs
encouraging people to get up and move. If you're going out for lunch
after this meeting, instead of ordering two entrees, you could order one
and split it with your colleague or friend. You could add a movement
activity to your staff or management meeting. You can take the stairs
instead of taking the elevator both up and down and you can take a break
from your computer, close your eyes, move your legs and stretch your
arms.

Take a minute and circle one thing that you are going to do today.

Okay. The next few slides are some online resources and ideas that are
examples that are available that might give you some new strategies to
implement worksite wellness. And I'm going to just quickly run through
them and then we'll open it up for questions.

The first one, starting on Slide 24 is healthfinder.gov. This has been
sent out to you before. And the neat thing about this Website is that it
has all of these kind of virtual online checkups that you can do to
screen yourself. It ranges from, getting your BMI, looking at cancer
risks, thinking about sun protection. And there's just an array of
online checkups you can take.

If you want to focus on staff wellness, you can use the monthly health
observances that the Website has. For example, February is American
Heart Month. So what can you do to support staff heart health? March is
National Nutrition Month. How can you incorporate National Nutrition
Month into your staff meetings? April 7 through the 13 is National
Public Health Week. And the focus of National Public Health Week is
climate change in the nation's health. So how do you -- how can you
raise awareness around -- for staff around climate change and what we
can do to Go Green?

The next slide is My Pyramid Tracker. This is an online dietary and
physical activity tool that provides information on the quality of your
diet, on your physical activity. It provides nutrition messages and
links to nutrients and physical activity information.

On the right side of the slide is an actual plan that was developed for
an individual based on their weight, their age and their gender. So it
helps you map out how many fruits and vegetables and grains you
individually, based on your own weight, need in a day. You could send
this link to staff and encourage them to sign up. And there's a tracking
system on it where staff can just do it individually and no one else has
to know what their diet looks like.

The next Website is America on the Move. This is a new Website that I
just found and it's really neat. This one offers free personalized
online resources, interactive tools, community support and it provides
the links to fun events in your local community. One of the neat things
about this Website is if you do have access to pedometers you can do
what I call these cyberwalks and for example, you can take the Iditarod
Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail or the Oregon Trail. And it gives you
this route and you have, for example, the Pacific Crest Trail. You have
42 days to complete it but it requires an average of 10,095 steps per
day.

So it helps you set goals on how many steps you need to take in a day to
reach the end of the trail. You can register as a team, so as a Head
Start program. You can do this as an individually. You know, and then
I'm thinking to get creative and do it as a classroom where you're
incorporating it with the children and getting them moving and it's also
learning opportunity for them around different walks and trails.

The next Website is a Small Steps Adult and Teen Website. This is a
Website that has activity trackers, diet planning, portion control and
sizes. You can get a daily newsletter. And the other fun thing about
this, you might have seen these on billboards, is it talks about small
steps you can take to improve your health, such as take a Sunday walk
instead of a Sunday drive or order your latte or hot chocolate with
fat-free milk or before going back for seconds, wait 10 or 15 minutes.
You might not want seconds. Take a walk or do exercise -- desk exercises
instead of a cigarette or coffee break.

The next Website is the Eat Smart Move More North Carolina Website. This
Website provides more detailed information on how to develop and
implement a more comprehensive worksite wellness initiative. There's
features including healthy meeting guides, how to do a stair initiative
using the stairs. It talks about bringing fresh produce to your work
setting, smart snacking and how to get moving more. There are
downloadable informational and encouraging posters on physical activity
and nutrition and those are highlighted on the next slide.

So, the next slide talks - there's some samples of the Eat Smart Move
More posters. Those are downloadable. They're colorful and you could do
that today and hang a few up in your office.

The next resource is focusing more on Environmental Health. It's called
Earth 911 and it's -- a Website that is considered the nation's premiere
environmental resource. What I thought was neat about this one is it
talks about how to Go Green at home, but it also talks about recycling.
And I think sometimes we don't always think of recycling as help but it
really is. So you could access that Website for some great tips.

And the last Website is the Division of Occupational Health and Safety
Ergonomics at Work program. So some people might be wondering, what
exactly ergonomics is but really, what it is, is it's involving how to
manipulate an individual's work area so that it fits better for them
individually. So you can work in neutral postures, maintain your curve
and be sitting up straight at your desk without feeling like its awkward
and uncomfortable.

So this Website helps with some of the ergonomic aspects of your office
area. It provides stretches and exercises that you can do in an office
work environment, talks about how to -- or support your healthy back and
there's a lot of other online resources.

I kind of feel like I just ran through all of those, but those are
Websites that are available. You also have another handout titled Online
Wellness Resources. You might just look at one of those that are online
and available to you.

But at this point, I'd like to open the phone line up for any comments
and questions that the group might have.

Coordinator: Certainly. At this time, if you would like to ask a
question, please press star, 1 on your touch tone phone. You will be
prompted to record your name. And to withdraw your request, star, 2.
Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, 1.
One moment please for the first question.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press
star, 1. Our first question today is from (Irani Brown).

Coordinator: Our next question is from (Vanessa Thompson).

(Vanessa Thompson): Yes, this is (Vanessa Thompson) from Head Start of
Lane County. And I was wondering how this program relates to I'm Moving,
I'm Learning, the children's program. Are they going to do them
together?

Allison Hertel: That's a great question. Really, what this information
-- about -- is about, is just a bunch of resources and ideas on how to
integrate and implement staff wellness. So those programs that are on
the call that are a part of I Am Moving, I Am Learning, I think that all
of the activities and the information y you received at that training,
if you implement that, you are doing something for staff wellness
because it has to do with healthy meetings and getting kids moving in
the program and that's going to take getting staff moving also.

(Vanessa Thompson): Thank you.

Allison Hertel: You're welcome.

Coordinator: And once again, if you would like to ask a question, please
press star, 1. One moment please for the next question.

Allison Hertel: If people also have ideas on how to -- how you're doing
staff wellness or things that you've done during your staff meetings,
please feel free to share that also.

Coordinator: I have no further questions at this time.

Allison Hertel: Okay. Well thank you. If there are no further questions
or comments, I'll go ahead and conclude the call. If things come up
after the call, please feel free to call or email me but thank you so
much for participating in today's call. Hopefully you've gained a few
new ideas on how you can do staff health and wellness activities in your
program. And my challenge to you today is to -- once we get off the
phone -- is to make two changes -- one for you and one for your work
environment. Thank you and everyone have a great afternoon.

END