Celebrating World Heart Day as part of your Wellness Program
Your heart powers your whole body. It lets you love, laugh and live your life to the fullest.
This year’s World Heart Day theme is Share the Power and is encouraging you to share how you power your heart. The hope is to encourage millions of people around the world to be heart healthy.
Participants are encouraged to celebrate World Heart Day on the 29th of September and show the world you’re powering your life by tweeting a Healthy Heart Selfie – the World Heart Federation will share it on their website Wall of Selfies and via social media.
Here are some ways that you can celebrate World Heart Day with your employees as part of your wellness program:
• Ask all employees to wear red on September 29 to show support
• Download the toolkit of resources from WorldHeartDay.org
• Organize a large group walk, run or other fitness activity and ask all employees to come out to participate
• Download ‘hearts’ from World Heart Federation or make your own and ask employees to write down a heart healthy goal, share what they do to stay heart healthy, or simply sign their name and pledge to support World Heart Day
• Showcase heart healthy foods at a display in the cafeteria/common area. If you have a cafeteria provider, coordinate a menu of heart healthy foods for the day
• Host a biometric screening clinic so that employees can learn their numbers and determine if they may be at risk. These measures include blood pressure, cholesterols and blood sugar. Even a simple blood pressure clinic can be impactful
• Share information on all modifiable risk factors with your employees: unhealthy diet, sedentary behaviour, smoking, alcohol abuse, stress, and unhealthy weight. Provide referral options to help employees manage their risks, such as Registered Dietitians, Smoking Cessation programs, Heart & Stroke Foundation resources, your company’s EAP and/or benefits provider
• Tweet along with us and the World Heart Federation: www.twitter.com/worldheartfed using #worldheartday