Week 1: Webinar: Introduction – What is your Why?
Week 2: Coaching: Visioning Exercise
Week 3: Webinar: How to be a more Mindful Eater
Week 4: Webinar: Energy Expenditure
Week 5: Coaching: Balancing your Energy Equation
Week 6: Webinar: Meet the Macronutrients
Week 7: Webinar: Building Your Support Network
Week 8: Webinar: Surviving the Supermarket
Week 9: Webinar: Stress Eating / Stress Management
Week 10: Webinar: Healthier Dining Out
Week 11: Webinar: Relapse Happens

Areas covered include:
• Creating a more positive outlook and sense of control
• Viewing challenges and adversities as opportunities for learning
• Actively working on your personal growth
• Finding meaning in your life
• Putting healthy problem solving and coping strategies into place
• Developing social connections

Extra day (5/27/26) is scheduled tentatively in case it is needed.

Design your personal plan to improve your health during these 8, 1-hour sessions:

Choose Your Plan I & II (sessions 1 & 2):

• Assess current state of health and vision for optimal health
• Inventory all health-related benefits and additional resources available
• Begin your plan to choose health in 2016 and beyond
• Incorporate your employee-benefits and other resources into your plan
• Scenarios for navigating our benefit-providers web sites

Choose Good Health I & II (sessions 3 & 4):

• Assess the leading threats to our health
• Assess the use of resources – time, money, others, required to maintain health and to live with bad health
• Choose to assume the role of General Manager of your health and hire a coach and quarterback for your health team
• Choose to navigate the healthcare system for the best outcomes at the lowest price and least amount of time
• Avoid medical errors – pursue quality care
• Scenarios for best care

Choose Good Communication (session 5):

• Choose the most appropriate care
• Choose to get the most out of doctor’s visits
• Choose to communicate with health care workers
• Choose to communicate with Ameriben and others
• Choose to communicate with Powers of Attorney, Living Wills, Advanced Medical Directives.
• Increase feeling of confidence and control (self-efficacy) when interacting with health care providers and navigating health-related systems
• Communication scenarios

Choose Prevention (session 6):

• Choose to use your preventive health benefits
• Personalize prevention
• Practice prevention with your physician
• Choose WellPath
• Scenarios for choosing preventive practices
• Choose medications safely & wisely (session 7):
• Choose your medications and understand your medications
• Choose & work with your pharmacist
• Choose to be a savvy consumer of medications
• Choose to use your prescription drug program
• Choose generics & brand name drugs wisely, and consider therapeutic equivalents
• Use 90 day fill for reduced cost, increased convenience and compliance
• Choose to be compliant
• Scenarios for utilizing prescription drug program and managing medications

Choose to be a good historian (session 8):

• Maintain a personal health record
• Know your family’s medical history
• Choose to provide accurate and comprehensive answers to help your doctors with diagnosis and treatment
• Choose to eliminate unnecessary and redundant tests
• Choose to reduce medical errors
• Increase feeling of confidence and control (self-efficacy) when interacting with health care providers and navigating health-related systems
• Scenarios – being a good historian

Week 1: Introduction, Assessment & Plan for the Healthy Back Challenge
This week’s session will explain the HBP in detail, answer all your questions. All the assessments available during the HBP will be reviewed and resources for back health will be shared.

Week 2: Ergonomics & Ergo Assessments
Ergonomics is the science of designing and arranging things people use so that the people and the things interact most efficiently and safely. Our work chairs, our cars, etc. can be amazingly complex so that we can adjust them to fit us personally and make us more comfortable, safe and efficient. The smallest forces such as typing or repetitive simple tasks can accumulate stress that can cause pain and injury. Learn about the HBC ergonomic self-assessments for your computer desk space and car.

Week 3: Joint Strong: Prevention vs. Treatment with IMC
IMC is a physical therapy group who has contracted with SRP-MIC to help treat joint pain. Join Integrated Musculoskeletal Care for a discussion about the use of their JointStrong™ mobile App to assess your back health and determine if you should practice prevention or you need treatment for back pain.

Week 4: Having a Healthy Back is Just One of Your Benefits
The health of our backs is so important. If you have ever had a back injury you know the degree which it can disrupt your life. It can make it difficult to sit, stand, carry, work, moving is hard but so can be staying in one position for any length of time. Because back health is so important and, poor back health is so common, there is a plethora of resources and information available to keep our backs healthy. Many of your SRP-MIC sponsored benefits can be used to keep your back healthy and to get you “back” on track if you are having back pain.

Week 5: Lifting, Pulling & Levers
Your back is at higher risk for injury when your spine is moving while carrying a load. Often lifting or moving objects can place our body in inefficient postures. Our posture and lifting technique can protect our back or put it an increased risk. For example, varying the lifting technique of a 20 lb. box can change the compressive force on our lower spine by more than 200%

Week 6: The Strat that Broke the Camel’s Back
Our body composition and the area which we carry body’s weight can place stress on our back, change our posture and make certain movements more difficult and dangerous. There are several methods available to assess our body composition and to determine if our body composition is putting our health at risk.

Week 7: Posture, the Hip Flexion Would & Pelvic Tilt
Obviously posture is important, but our posture while standing, sitting, and even lying down can impact the health of our back. Conversely the health of our back and supportive muscles can negatively influence our posture creating pain and worsening back issues. We spend most of our day bending forward (flexion) and less of our day extending backwards. This can cause a phenomena called “pelvic tilt” which places increased pressure on our lower backs.

Week 8: Your Healthy Back Plan
The HBC is coming to an end and you have learned a lot, assessed your health and risk for back injuries, gathered a lot of resources and developed an individualized exercise program to keep your back healthy. Now it’s time to make a formal plan because people who plan, and set goals, achieve more than those people who do not. “A plan without action is only a dream. Action without a plan is a nightmare.”

HBC Assessments: These assessment tools will help you establish a baseline for back health. You will develop and individualized exercise plan based on the results from the assessments. The assessments can be used later to evaluate the effectiveness of your exercise plan.

Exercises

• Flexibility: JointStrong exercise routine is available and can be taught best using the JointStrong Application from your smartphone. Click below for the flyer of exercises and for more information about the JointStrong App.
  • Hip Flexion-Rotation Stretch: Consider this exercise if you had difficulty with the Ober Test (test #6) of the Healthy Back Tests of the assessment from week one.
  • Scissor Stretch: Consider this exercise if you had difficulty with the Thomas Test (test #4) of the Healthy Back Test of the assessment.
  • Quadriceps Stretch: Consider this exercise if you had difficulty with the Elys Test (test #7) of the Healthy Back Test of the assessment.
• Harvard Health 3-Week Routine: Back flexibility and strength exercise routing with flexibility, strengthening and progression over 3-weeks.
• Stability Ball Exercise: Commonly prescribed stability ball exercises for back pain. Click on the button below for information about stability balls and their use for exercise, especially for a healthy back and to treat pain.
• Strength/Muscle Endurance:
  • Here is a video from Physical Therapy Video on YouTube. So you may have to view this on your personal device. This is a combination of stretches and exercises, many of which we cover individually through JointStrong App and our handouts, lunch and learn sessions and assessments.
  • SparkPeople Exercise Library: Library of exercises with descriptions, pictures and video for lower back exercises. Library has search and filter utilities.
  • ACE Fitness Exercise Library: Library of exercises with descriptions, pictures and video. Library has search and filter utilities.

Choosing Wisely Resources

• Handout
• Choosing Wisely Website

Joint Strong App

• Handout
• Joint Strong FAQs
• Joint Strong Website