New Initiatives
In 2010, we began to create training and coaching toolkits for professionals who wanted to add culture change to their health promotion work. More information about joining the growing network of Wellness Culture Coaches is available at www.wellnessculturecoaching.com.

Kitchen Table Talks for Wellness is a new book that features 15 great conversations about creating a household culture that supports healthy lifestyles. Information about wellness strategies is followed by discussion questions. A Wellness Goal Checklist and a Household Wellness Culture Survey help housemates set meaningful goals. Lively and thought-provoking conversations lead to a healthy and happy household.

A Family Guide to Wellness is a new book about creating a family culture that supports healthy lifestyles. Our relationships with parents, children, grandparents, siblings, spouses, and other relatives are we learn and model. The book offers a step-by-step appraoch to building a family wellness culture that makes the healthy choice the easier choice.

The Wellness Connections card game is a fun new way to foster peer support for lifestyle change. Each of the 48 cards features a great wellness question to stimulate conversation about common interests and how we might enjoy a happy, healthy and productive future together.

In 2011, we are working on a movie that features stories about how people have created wellness cultures in their homes.

A new book is being written about creating personal wellness zones. Each chapter will explore strategies for creating supportive environments at home, among friends, at work and in the community.

We are pleased about several professional partnerships formed this year:

• Dee Edington, of the University of Michigan’s Health Management Research Center, is developing a new company that will address cultural support for health and productivity at the worksite. The focus of our partnership will be to add qualitative measures of cultural support to his needs assessment and planning process.
  
  
• We have been offering an online training involving peer support for wellness to Planned Action Toward Health, LLC(PATH) clients, including the Vermont school system. The group is planning to update the program in 2011. We will also help PATH and its parent company, Hickok and Boardman, develop the capacity to deliver online Wellness Leadership training.
  
  
• The Brazilian Social Industry Service (SESI) has adapted the Wellness Mentor® program (peer coaching) for more than 2,000 Brazilian companies. This year we will be adding Wellness Leadership tools to SESI’s offerings.
  
  
• In 2010 we worked with Health Improvement Solutions to develop a Wellness Leadership Dashboard. This online management feedback system makes it possible for managers at all levels to set and track group wellness goals for their work teams. The Dashboard maps performance, programmatic and cultural goals. It also suggests best practices. This system was refined and tested in 2010. We hope to make it more widely available in 2011.