Wellness That Works: Study Shows Success of UR Employee Wellness Program in Improving Heart Health

A new study by researchers in the School of Nursing showed that the UR Medicine Employee Wellness Program has made statistically significant improvement in reducing the risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in participants.

The study, published in the Journal of Population Health Management, looked at the health outcomes for more than 16,000 employees at the University of Rochester over a five-year period and found that nearly 50 percent of those who were at moderate to very high risk for CVD at the start of the program and participated in the program for at least one year were able to lower their 10-year CVD risk, with nearly one-third improving by an entire risk category.

“Beyond the significant and positive outcomes of the program’s impact, this study provides a national, peer-reviewed validation of the UR Medicine Employee Wellness Program. That’s really the meaningful implication of this study,” said the paper’s lead author, Irena Boyce, PhD, senior director for population health informatics at URMC and associate professor of clinical nursing at the UR School of Nursing. “To the best of our knowledge, there is no program out there with parallel outcomes published in a peer-reviewed journal. That’s a big accomplishment for the program.”

Read more.