100 Day Wellness Challenge

January 23 – May 1, 2012

Participants form teams of 2-10 adults to motivate and support each other in achieving their fitness and weight loss goals. Each team needs to choose one person to be its team captain who will have regular computer and internet access. Teams may participate in the Minutes of Activity Division and/or the Weight Loss Division. Through this website, team captains register a team and team members report their progress weekly. This site also provides a daily journal and message center to help keep team members connected and involved in making health changes to reach their fitness and weight loss goals.

All Live Healthy Iowa participants will benefit from the following:

• Live Healthy Iowa training t-shirt
• The chance to win individual and team prizes throughout Challenge
• Weekly activity, nutrition and recipe email tips
• A personal online tracking page
• Team leader board
• 100 days of access to Training Peaks
• Recipes, workouts and more!

Teams may register in the Minutes of Activity Division, the Weight Loss Division or both. In either case, individuals track and record minutes of activity and weight loss which is used to calculate your team’s percentage weight loss and total activity minutes. Friendly competition among teams is encouraged. (Participants – 18 years old and older)

For the Minutes of Physical Activity Division, each team member reports the number of minutes they are physically active. Activity minutes that count include anything you deem to be intentional physical activity. For example, walking to the elevator does not count but intentionally taking the stairs instead of the elevator does count. The goal is to track your current level of physical activity and make small daily changes to increase it.

For the Weight Loss Division, teams are assessed based on the combined weight of all members. Individuals can report their weight online or have their captain submit it for them. Team totals are viewed as percentage lost or gained. Individual weights are only viewable by that individual.

There are two ways to register teams for Live Healthy Iowa:

1. Multiple teams from a worksite or organization

Live Healthy Iowa is a wellness program that can be administered to worksites or organizations that may have offices spread across the state or country. These worksites or organizations may wish to register multiple teams within their organization. In this case, Live Healthy Iowa will assign the entity (worksite, church, etc.) its own Group ID. Team captains will use the group ID to link their individual team to its entity. These entities will have their own page on the website where they can view the ranking of each team registered under their Group ID.

For more information about registering multiple teams or to receive a Group ID, please contact Live Healthy Iowa staff at (888)777-8881 or info@livehealthyiowa.org

2. Individual teams of friends or family members

Groups of people who do not wish to link their team to a larger entity (worksite, church, etc.) can form their own Friends & Family team. This program is perfect for a group of friends, husband-wife teams and even co-workers if their worksite is not registered in the Company & Organization program.

To learn more about Friends & Family teams, please contact Live Healthy Iowa staff at (888)777-8881 or info@livehealthyiowa.org

Registration opens December 20, 2011!

Myrtue Medical Center has been notified they have been selected to receive the Excellence Through Insight award for overall patient satisfaction in their inpatient medical unit.  They contract with a national vendor, HealthStream Research, for their patient satisfaction surveys.  The award will be presented at HealthStream’s Annual National Conference in March.  Myrtue representatives are also being asked to participate in a panel to share some of the initiatives they have in place to provide excellence in customer service.

Only six percent of the 625 medical entities who utilize HealthStream will receive an award in 2012.  Myrtue Medical Center was chosen for receiving the highest ratings in inpatient care from among HealthStream’s clients, as well as exceeding industry standards.

“We are very proud that we have been chosen to receive this award.  Our staff has made a strong commitment towards customer service excellence for our patients and it is very gratifying to see those efforts rewarded,” stated Karen Buman, RN, BSN, Chief Nursing Executive at Myrtue Medical Center.

Myrtue Hospice announces Karen Kloewer as their “2011 Volunteer of the Year”. Karen has been a volunteer for Myrtue Hospice since 1998. She has mainly been a patient volunteer visiting faithfully to those individuals that she has been assigned and proving companionship. Through the years, Karen has also helped with various administrative assignments.

By providing compassion and dependability, she has been a huge asset to our department and is very deserving of this award. Karen and Cathy Jensen, Hospice Support Coordinator, attended a Volunteer Recognition Ceremony in Urbandale, IA sponsored  by the Hospice and Palliative Care Association of Iowa earlier this fall and then was also recognized locally during Myrtue Hospice’s Volunteer In-service. 

What if you knew you could add healthy and happy years to your life?  Would you be interested?

On behalf of Shelby County, Harlan is applying to become a Blue Zones Community to help our citizens lead longer, happier, more productive lives with less chronic disease, higher quality of life and lower health care costs.

A Blue Zone is where people live longer and better–well into their nineties or even 100s. Dubbed “Blue Zones” by National Geographic researcher Dan Buettner and best selling author “the Blue Zones–Lessons for Living Longer, from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.”  These longevity hotspots share nine lifestyle habits–Power 9 Principles–responsible for their remarkable results.  Power 9 are easy small steps that everyone can take.

The Blue Zones Project is one part of Healthy Iowa Initiative–a privately led–Governor endorsed grassroots effort to make Iowa the “Healthiest State in the Nation” in 5 years. The Governor made an announcement about Blue Zones on August 10, 2011.

This project is a collaboration of Healthways and Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield Insurance Company.

This Blue Zones project will give 10 communities in Iowa the opportunity to become a Blue Zones Community.  If chosen as one of the 10 communities we would receive direct support from Blue Zones National experts for 18-36 months.

One extremely important criteria will be community support.  EVERYONE is urged to pledge their support for such an effort by going to www.bluezonesproject.com and clicking on “I am a Citizen.”  Type in Harlan as the community you are supporting and enter the Harlan zip code 51537.  You can also text BZP to 772937. You will simply be pledging the following–I want my hometown to be chosen to become a Blue Zones Community and pledge to participate if it is selected.  You will be asked to choose some personal behaviors that you would do, and it is easy to choose at least one.