This is what I am talking about! The attached article in Progressive Grocer highlights the initiative that Kroger launched earlier this week in offering consumers free, yes, free preventive screening services.

While I realize that Kroger will reap the benefits of driving additional traffic to their store locations with such an initiative, my altruistic side likes to believe that companies like Kroger are realizing that it is going to take a collective effort to start turning our health behaviors around in this country. Now, if they would only stop stocking their shelves with cookies, ice cream, candy…we may be on to something.

Chances are the answer ranges from “maybe” to “no clue” According to a recent Hewitt and Associate survey, employees agree on the importance of understanding their personal health risks, but struggle with what the next steps should be. As someone who works in the healthcare field I admittedly find that the results of my Health Risk Assessment (HRA) leave me somewhat dazed and confused. Do you feel the same way?

There appears to be a great opportunity for health coaches and HRA providers to do a better job of taking the HRA data and enabling health coaches to better educate participants on not only what the HRA data means, but what actions a person should take given the data results. Have you experienced a situation where this is working well?