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With the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act in the USA, many companies are investing in corporate wellness programs as a way to reduce healthcare costs and increase productivity of their workforces. Increasing healthcare expenditures and the pandemic of obesity and chronic diseases are driving forces to the development and implementation of workplace wellness programs across the globe. Companies expect to experience a return on their investment through lower healthcare costs and increased productivity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this study, 109 business professionals were surveyed (primarily almost equally divided between Russian and Americans citizens) to examine their health-promoting and health risk behaviors. Demographics were compared in an effort to identify the key differences in order to pinpoint development opportunities to increase efficiencies among target populations.

According to the results, nationality was related to certain differences in health-promoting behaviors, participation rates and frequency of wellness programs offered by employers. No differences were found among different age groups. The results indicated that not even a single wellness program design is appropriate for all companies or even one company across all locations.

Although there were no general conclusions have been drawn nor have the influencing factors for the different behaviors of the various target groups been adequately examined in this exploratory study, there were baselines developed for future research.

Few empirical studies exists that measure the perceived value of corporate wellness programs, especially among different cultural settings. In effect, wellness programs need to be developed specifically for the target population, with considerations to perceived value differences.

This paper aims to examine the concept of wellness as a form of healthy lifestyle in tourism settings.

Data were collected through a self-complete questionnaire administered to a sample of guests staying in wellness hotels in Croatia. These data were processed using univariate statistics (general description of the sample), cluster analysis (segmentation purposes), multinomial regression analysis (profiling the clusters) and confirmatory factor analysis (confirmation of wellness-related lifestyle).

Six wellness-related lifestyle dimensions (diet, fitness, social interactions, cultural diversity, health awareness and personal development) were confirmed, and four segments emerged (high-level wellness, diet- and health-oriented, fitness-oriented and low-level wellness clusters). They differed in their travel motivation.

This paper suggests a wellness-related lifestyle scale that integrates the elements of wellness intervention models and healthy lifestyle, confirms the link between healthy lifestyle and travel motivation and establishes the importance of the social, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of a tourist’s lifestyle.

Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, the purpose of this paper was to posit an industry-wide technological intervention for hotel housekeeper safety and health through the advancement of wearable technology.

Using the task-technology fit (TTF) model and examples of successful safety and health applications of wearable technologies in the health-care and construction management industries, interventions and future research directions are presented to address workplace hazards experienced by hotel housekeepers.

The fit between a variety of hotel housekeeper user requirements, task demands and wearable functions are explored with justification for the use of wearable devices to improve safety and health-related outcomes.

A research agenda is proposed for the adoption and use of wearables in the hospitality industry with the intention to generate meaningful interventions beyond corporate wellness, and the mitigation of employee privacy concerns to enhance wearable adoption.

Given the importance of consumer safety and health assurance in a post-pandemic business environment, hospitality and tourism organizations should place greater emphasis on protecting front line employees who will be essential in regaining economic viability.

Theoretical and practical foci should move beyond a simplistic view of hospitality and tourism worker safety and health that generally centers on wellness initiatives and other baseline strategies, toward a more holistic view benefitting the hospitality industry.

Extant concerns about hotel housekeeper safety and health, in addition to new concerns and threats in a post-pandemic work environment, are largely understudied and worthy of investigation.

Is humanity heading to immortal living? If so, what areas of society are playing an active role in achieving this? In order to understand this, the study explores the relationship between immortality and the wellness and medical tourism industry to seek potential relationships between them and ultimately, asks difficult questions about the growth of these tourism sectors and the potential need for greater regulation of them.

Taking a pragmatic philosophical approach and through the examination of refined information from secondary sources and published material and reports, the study presents original theoretical knowledge and a model exploring tourism and human immortality.

This paper argues that continued growth in the wellness and medical markets today could lead to a world where transhumanists and cyborgs are present in our world, even taking over from Homo sapiens. The study presents a model highlighting the potential role of wellness and medical tourism markets, illustrating the potential for future consumer services that could further fuel the search for immortality. Thus, how such markets and consumer desires are (in)directly supporting humanities desire for (non-human) immortal existence.

Today, individuals are driven by wellness practices and medical and cosmetic desires and are willing to travel the globe in search of companies who are either capable of carrying out the desired procedures or seeking prices more affordable to them. This research offers novel insights into these complex relationships and maps the affiliation between wellness and medical practices and the concept of immortality.

This paper aims to convey and analyze participants’ experience of an online mindfulness-based workplace wellness program, The Wellbeing Protocol, during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, with the aim of understanding the underlying mechanisms of how the program impacted stress, burnout and mental wellbeing.

New Zealand teachers participated in an online mindfulness-based wellness program in 2020. Participants’ experience was captured via focus groups and open-ended survey questions collected before, immediately after and three months following the intervention. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis.

Three themes emerged: self-awareness and nonreactivity may facilitate a reduction in stress levels, the purposeful cultivation of self-care and positive emotions may be a precursor to enhanced wellbeing and positive relationships with others and evidence of effectiveness at work may mitigate burnout symptoms. Findings depicted effective strategies to improve wellbeing as well as promising areas for further research.

For school settings: participants’ positive appraisals of the program suggest The Wellbeing Protocol might be a suitable option to support teacher wellbeing. For workplaces: the positive outcomes related to improved effectiveness and relationships at work, as well as the program’s flexibility related to its short length and online delivery, might make it a potential option to support employee wellbeing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the impact of a mindfulness-based intervention on New Zealand teachers, the first to explore the impact of the Wellbeing Protocol and one of few studies that have investigated an online mindfulness-based intervention. It has multiple qualitative data sources and a follow-up of three months.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the experience participating in a health promotion program for refugee and asylum seekers and torture survivors in a safety net clinical setting.

Refugee and asylum seeker torture survivors participated in a seven-week health promotion program at a safety-net clinic. Participants interviewed before, during and after the program was designed to improve and maintain health promotion program quality.

Six major themes emerged: social networks; tools/techniques/skills; wellness planning; spiritualism; health maintenance; and social/group interaction. Preliminary results suggest that this multi-pronged approach is feasible and acceptable to foreign-born torture survivors.

Torture impacts many facets of one’s life. A program which addresses health from a multidisciplinary perspective has promise to facilitate healing.

The impact of torture and human rights violations significantly affects many facets of peoples’ lives including emotional, social, physical and spiritual dimensions. Therefore a program which utilizes a multidisciplinary integrated bio-psychosocial and spiritual approach has the potential to simultaneously address many domains facilitating healing.

BeWell, a bio-psychosocio-spiritual health promotion strategy aimed at improving health service quality and increasing patient satisfaction to support positive health outcomes by implementing in-classroom/person modules for patients, to the authors’ knowledge is unique in its efforts to encompass multiple domains simultaneously and fully integrate an approach to wellbeing.

UK mental health strategy calls for interventions that empower people to self-manage their condition. In lifestyle coaching, coach and client work collaboratively on positive behaviour change to improve client health. There is debate about the appropriateness of coaching for mental health, yet claims have not been supported with evidence. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and scope of the existing research literature in this field.

Scoping review.

The growing evidence base shows positive outcomes of coaching; for instance, symptom reduction, enhanced self-management and achievement of personal goals.

The evidence base is small and of variable quality, offering insights that warrant further exploration.

Coaching not only supports better self-management but also addresses further mental health strategy priorities (such as improved physical health and social functioning). Coaches need not be mental health experts; therefore coaching may be a cost-effective intervention.

As mental ill-health prevalence continues to rise despite widespread use of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies and medication, there is a need to explore how novel approaches such as coaching might be integrated into mental healthcare.

This is the first study to collate the evidence on mental health coaching, highlighting its extensive potential, which should be further explored in research and practice.

Most workplace health promotion efforts have failed to consistently and sustainably encourage employees to take responsibility for their health. The purpose of this paper is to explore a potentially high-impact solution – Health Codes of Conduct – for engaging and motivating employees to assume responsibility for their health.

This mixed methods study draws on interview and survey methodology with a sample of 149 working adults to examine the feasibility of Health Codes of Conduct. Descriptive and inferential statistics are calculated to understand reactions, characteristics of the companies likely to support the idea, and components of a Health Code of Conduct.

Nearly all employees offered moderate to high support for Health Codes of Conduct; this included overweight but not obese employees. Additionally, all demographic groups either moderately or strongly supported the policy when they included either monetary incentives (such as prescription discounts) or often overlooked non-monetary incentives (such as employee recognition). Some of the more popular features of Health Codes of Conduct included annual physical exams, exercise routines, and simply being encouraged to stay home when ill.

This paper is the first to propose the concept of Health Codes of Conduct and solicit feedback from employees on this novel idea. Furthermore, the authors identify both the monetary and non-monetary incentives and disincentives that employees believe would be most compelling.

Peer support and other consumer-provided services have burgeoned within the USA during the past 30 years and are now a central component of mental health services nationally. However, their growth has been uneven and somewhat dependent on state initiatives, policies, and funding. Recent programs have matured along myriad paths, resulting in a variety of program typologies, service structures, and funding streams, but with common values, missions, and principles. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The landscape of peer specialist services in the USA, as well as innovations afoot, is reviewed. The empirical information that speaks to the efficacy of peer support and the need to better understand the mechanisms by which it is effective is described.

Although peer support has grown exponentially across the USA, its growth has been uneven. Evidence suggests that peer specialists experience role ambiguity within many existing programs and systems. Though the empirical evidence for peer services has grown, research has been most favorable for manualized, group interventions. There is still a need to better understand how individual peer support is beneficial and effective, and how individual peer support can best be utilized to promote the best outcomes for those served.

In order for the workforce of peer support specialists to continue to grow and for services to be responsive and innovative, we need to better understand the mechanisms by which peer support is beneficial and how it can be structured and delivered to promote the best outcomes for those served. The “core conditions” of helping relationships promulgated decades ago by Rogers along with research on self-disclosure may be useful frameworks for understanding and researching the effectiveness of peer support.

More research is needed to better understand the effectiveness of peer support services and how best to insure that they are well-integrated into the mental health programs and systems in which they serve.

There is a need to understand why peer support is effective and how best to sustain peer specialists in their roles within the mental health system.

Health promotion programs (HPPs) are increasingly prevalent at universities due to the numerous documented benefits in other various work environments. However, universities are unique work environments with various job duties and responsibilities. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine differences in participation in university HPPs among faculty, staff and administration. Further, barriers to participation were examined as well as an analysis of those meeting weekly physical activity (PA) recommendations.

An electronic survey was sent to all employees at a large, metropolitan university (n=3,603), that inquired about participation in the university HPP in the last six months and their perceived barriers to participation. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire was used to assess PA amount, and thus, if the employee was meeting the weekly PA recommendations was determined.

Results (n=308) indicated a difference in HPP participation rates between all three job classifications (χ2: p < 0.001; staff highest, faculty lowest). Unique barriers were identified for each job classification such as time constraints, following their own exercise program, and schedule conflicts. Results also indicated a difference in those meeting PA recommendations (χ2: p < 0.001; faculty highest, staff lowest).

The results of this study suggest that to maximize effectiveness of university HPPs, administrators should recognize the differences in barriers to participation among different classifications of university employees; specific needs per job classification should also be considered. By taking these types of factors into consideration when planning, university HPPs can target specific employees with evidence-based communications and strategies for optimal participation, effectiveness and outcomes.