Health Dialog Receives Grant to Walk the Wellness Talk

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Health Dialog today announced it has received a grant from parent company Bupa as part of the Bupa Global Challenge. The Bupa Global Challenge aims to get 100,000 people worldwide walking during the month of September 2012 as part of the larger Bupa Well World initiative that aims to achieve the following goals by 2015:

“We are thrilled to have earned a grant in support of the Bupa Global Challenge”

Empower 60 million people worldwide to look after their health
Reduce Bupa’s carbon footprint by 20%

The Bupa Global Challenge addresses each of these goals. By encouraging community members, including its own employees and colleagues to walk, Health Dialog will be encouraging people to look after their own health in an environmentally-friendly way. Walking is one of the least expensive and most accessible forms of physical activity and research shows that walking just 15 minutes a day can increase life expectancy by 3 years.¹ With the world facing a chronic disease epidemic, caused in part by the rising trend in obesity rates and declining rates of physical activity², there is huge impact to be made. Walking as an alternative to motored transportation can also contribute to reduction in carbon emissions.

Health Dialog will use the grant money to offer its online WELLNESS Dialog® platform to human resource (HR) professionals in the US free of charge for one full year. This effort will be over and above Health Dialog’s internal effort to get employees moving, which includes healthy competition for prizes including fitness devices, activity-focused video games, gift cards, and charitable donations. Employees can log their miles and track their progress through the WELLNESS Dialog® platform as well, which has been extremely well received internally, with over 73% of employees registered to use the site.

“We are thrilled to have earned a grant in support of the Bupa Global Challenge,” said James Tugendhat, Chief Executive Officer, Health Dialog. “In addition to the lives that we serve as part of our everyday business, we can now bring health and wellness services free of charge to human resource professionals throughout the country, so they can use firsthand a state-of-the-art tool to designed to change behavior. It is our hope that our human resource colleagues enjoy their experience and promote the solution forward, helping us spread “the well”.”

The WELLNESS Dialog® platform engages people in wellness from start to finish, beginning with a patent-pending, first-of-its-kind well-being assessment that identifies individuals not only with red-flags but also yellow flags, for early identification. Participants are matched with carefully tailored plans that include online learning, games and challenges, behavior change incentives, and telephonic health coaching. Launched publicly in October 2011, the online component of the WELLNESS Dialog® offering is powered through an alliance with Limeade.

The 15 million individuals who currently have access to Health Dialog’s total population health management services will contribute to the Bupa Well World goal of empowering 60 million people. Additionally, in an effort to meet the carbon footprint goal, Health Dialog has implemented several green initiatives, including recycling and water and energy conservation.

About Health Dialog Services Corporation:

Health Dialog Services Corporation is a leading provider of healthcare analytics and decision support. The firm is a private, wholly-owned subsidiary of Bupa, a global provider of healthcare services. Health Dialog helps healthcare payors improve healthcare quality while reducing overall costs. Company offerings include health coaching for medical decisions, chronic conditions, and wellness; population analytic solutions; and consulting services. Health Dialog helps individuals participate in their own healthcare decisions, develop more effective relationships with their physicians, and live healthier, happier lives. For more information please visit www.healthdialog.com.

¹ http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60749-6/abstract
² International Obesity Task Force and European Association for the Study of Obesity. “Obesity in Europe: The Case for Action” http://www.iotf.org/media/euobesity.pdf