Spectrum - Volume 17 Issue 25 March 23, 1995 - CommonHealth eliminates membership requirement

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CommonHealth eliminates membership requirement

Spectrum Volume 17 Issue 25 - March 23, 1995

CommonHealth, the state's employee-health-improvement program, is eliminating the membership requirement to participate in health programs and activities, and is opening the programs up to all state employees of participating agencies.

Since its beginning in the state in 1986, CommonHealth has been operated as a membership program. Employees interested in participating in any of the CommonHealth programs and activites were first invited to join CommonHealth by filling out a confidential health-risk appraisal and participating in a medical screening. Results of the health assessment were provided to the employees through group Interpretation Sessions.

Joining CommonHealth gave an employee approximately $200 worth of valuable health information as a benefit. After joining CommonHealth, members were then encouraged to participate in many health-promotion programs and activities.

Effective January 1, all employees at agencies offering CommonHealth can participate in all of the programs without first joining and completing the health-risk appraisal. This membership change provides employees easy access to the CommonHealth program without the paperwork or questionnaires. The health-risk-appraisal and medical-screening component are still an important and valuable part of the CommonHealth program and they will continue to be made available to employees on the same 18-24 month cycle as in the past.

All university employees, retirees and adult family members are eligible to participate in CommonHealth programs of their choice. To reach all employees easily and cost-efficiently, programs will be announced through Gopher, VT Worldwide Web, Mosaic, Netscape, and the mainframe computer systems. Listed below are the ways to easily access the current CommonHealth listing. There will be announcements in Spectrum when new information is entered into the system.

VT Gopher/Worldwide Web Users: Select from Main Menu: Faculty & Staff Information, Select: CommonHealth. (For those using a gopher client, connect to gopher.vt.edu to display the Main Menu).

Browser (Mosaic, Netscape) Users: To view Worldwide Web, connect to the URL http://www.vt.edu to display the Virginia Tech home page. Select: Faculty & Staff Information, Select: CommonHealth.

Mainframe Users: Select: University Information, Select: Info. Adminsys., Select: Personnel Information, Select: CommonHealth.

Employees, retirees, or adult family members who do not have access to a computer may contact the CommonHealth office at 1-7810 to receive a printed copy of the program listing.