Questions and Ideas from LAMA

Here are some questions and ideas received from the LAMA board (in italics), and Loriene's responses:

How will ALA define “workplace wellness”? Would the focus be on environmental issues, health promotion, health assessment, etc.? Will the focus be on personal health issues, that could include programs in stress management, substance abuse counseling, nutrition, fitness, spiritual growth (Yoga, meditation, etc.)? I understand that President Roy has set up a Workplace Wellness Task Force to “produce tangible expressions that promote healthy workplaces and lifestyles among library workers”. Among the task force deliverables, in addition to the Wellness Fair for Anaheim, are a personal health passport for ALA members; a workplace environmental scan that can be used to review working conditions that may impact worker health. ALA members are not trained healthcare professionals, and typically do not have background in environmental scans. I would imagine that the Task Force would need to partner with a number of outside groups to make any of these deliverables a reality—governmental agencies, professional associations, even the Wellness Councils of America.

Thanks for checking in with these great questions.

A master's student is currently developing a prototype website. The site will provide some links to good tools (e.g., BMI calculator, 10,000 steps site), highlight some personal wellness journeys, share stories of some libraries, and invite people to share information. In terms of the environmental scan, this will likely be some links to materials developed by reputable sources.

I would also imagine that the Task Force would need to survey the membership to see (1) what libraries currently have wellness programs in place; (2) what libraries are considering designing and implementing a wellness program. With that information in hand, they can put out an RFP for the Wellness Fair to collect both success stories and stories of the developments in progress. The selection criteria for participants in the Fair might include categories covering (a) informational outreach programs to support the wellness program (both internal and external); (b) broad-based involvement of library staff, outside partners; (c) assessment instruments to evaluate effectiveness of the wellness program.

The Wellness fair will include information and activities. We're hoping to have a theatre area so attendees can participate in yoga and hula. (We have the yoga trainer lined up.) We have some funding to contract with someone to keep track of the detais. We've talked about a survey and feel that those data would be useful. We might need to work with ALA's office of research and the ALA-APA as well as HRDR here. At one point the John Cotton Dana committee members thought that they might give out a few special recognitions for libraries that support some of these efforts. We might organizes a virtual poster session.

Acknowledging achievement in the area of workplace wellness, then, could:
1. link to the initiative spotlighting workplace wellness (how ever it is defined);
2. recognize partnerships within or outside ALA that ensure the programs’ success;
3. recognize innovative “education” programs within the library to promote the program and support employee commitment and buy-in;
4. recognize “success” stories, perhaps having multiple categories based on type of library and budget.

All great ideas!

4Women.Gov

http://www.4women.gov/
The Women's Challenge 2006 web site is http://www.4women.gov/whw/woman/ The current web site does not have much information about the project, but they must have done something with the statistics. Participants kept daily logs.
The toolkit on this web site is nice http://www.4women.gov/tools/

Traditional Games

Phys. ed. Classes Integrate Tradition In Montana. Jack McNeel, July 6,
2006, Indian Country Today. Copyright Indian Country Today. All Rights
Reserved.

[Great Falls, Mont. - Educators recently attended 'The Culture of
Survival' certification academy in Great Falls to learn how to integrate
traditional Indian games into physical education classes statewide. The
state of Montana now requires that Indian education, including knowledge,
history and culture, be included in all schools throughout the state.
The four-day event was organized by DeeAnna Leader, director of Indian
education for the Great Falls Public Schools and executive director of the
International Traditional Games Society. She explained, 'Two parallel
things were going on. Nine people made up the certification group of
teachers and 15 people were getting certified. Another eight were part of
the curriculum development group. Both groups were going back and forth
between each other because often the state standards group would have a
question they needed to ask of the people who were doing the training for
certification.' A rewrite of the Montana Constitution in 1972 included
wording requiring Montanans to know about Indian culture and the heritage
of the tribes in the state. ''Indian Education for All' is the title given
to legislation that passed the Montana Legislature in 1999, essentially
putting regulations, policy and money into the program. It's taken all
those years to get the program off the ground. Arlene Adams, Salish from
Arlee, was an instructor at the recent workshop. She commented, 'It's been
my 20-year commitment to work with Native Games for the implementation of
instruction into the public school system as well as the Indian school
system in Montana. It was great to see the educators come out and the
people that attended the workshop to help in that process. It's really
good to see it's finally coming out the way it is. The workshop was
wonderful and really strengthens my hope for Native Games.' Indian
education is to eventually be included in all school disciplines. The
social studies curriculum was done in the past year and current efforts
are directed at the health and physical education aspects. The group of
eight in attendance at the recent academy that makes up curriculum
development observed the teaching of the Native Games activities to
determine how they can be infused into the health and physical education
curriculum.
Dulci Whitford, Blackfeet, is one of those curriculum development persons.
Whitford has recently been hired by the Great Falls district as a teacher
on special assignment to help implement Indian Education for All.]

Workplace Stress Self Assessment

I was recently preparing a presentation for a class when I took a few minutes to explore the "Health Check Tools" http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/interactivetools/index.html on the National Library of Medicine's MedlinePlus web site. One of the tools available is "Workplace Stress Self Assessment" http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress/WL00064 This is a pretty nice tool. You fill it out online and it provides you with a score of how much stress you are under, but then it goes further and provides you with an "Action Plan". This plan responds to your answers to the Self Assessment. Pretty useful! Now if only I would actually follow some of these items in the plan...

Welcome

Welcome to the blog for Loriene Roy's Workplace Wellness Task Force.