Now, more than ever before, Tennesseans need to focus on the “health” in health care. Preventing disease by improving our health not only makes us feel better, but it prolongs our life expectancy and reduces the amount of money we as individuals and as a state spend on treatment and cure.
Right now in Tennessee, one in four adults and one in five high school students smoke. Thirty-four percent of our population is obese and another 35 percent of us are overweight. Rates of diabetes, hypertension and other chronic disease are at near-epidemic levels. And, most concerning, our children now have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
Our poor health is also affecting our economy. It is estimated that we are spending $6 billion a year to treat diseases related to our behaviors. There are also burdens on business that come from having an unhealthy workforce, including rising insurance claims and premiums, higher absenteeism and lower productivity. The simple reality is that poor health is costly.
In my work, I have had the good fortune to be involved with businesses and organizations that are impacting the way we deliver, manage and even think about health care.
For more than 25 years, I have been an ardent advocate for wellness issues, focusing specifically for the last five years on helping young people understand and find ways to confront health care challenges.
The Governor’s Foundation for Health and Wellness shares this passion and is working to enable and encourage Tennesseans to live healthier lives in order to reduce the rates of chronic disease in our state.
Through the foundation’s Healthier Tennessee initiative, it is providing interactive wellness tools to individuals, workplaces and faith communities across the state. I am excited about the foundation’s work in prevention and its use of innovative technology to make getting healthier as easy as possible.
The foundation recently launched Streaks for Small Starts, a new app that approaches health and wellness differently, incorporating gamification to motivate and engage participants. It allows users to easily access healthy ideas, set goals, track progress and be reminded and motivated to take small steps each day that can add up to significant health improvements over time. The iOS and Android versions of Streaks are available for free to all Tennesseans.
I think many of us can get overwhelmed trying to find the time to live healthier, but the Streaks for Small Starts app makes it doable. With the swipe of your finger, Streaks can turn your phone into your own personal wellness coach and put the resources you need to get healthier right at your fingertips.
We use our smartphones to make so many of our daily activities easier. I encourage you to see if it can help you improve your health. Learn more about the Streaks for Small Starts app at healthierTN.com.
Our health and the overall health of our state will greatly impact what Tennessee’s future looks like. Together, we can make wellness a priority, reduce our state’s health burden and improve our outlook. I hope you will explore the resources available through Healthier Tennessee and become an active participant in managing your health. It’s an investment I know you’ll be glad you made.
Clayton McWhorter, a member of the Board of Directors of the Governor’s Foundation for Health and Wellness, serves as Chairman Emeritus of Clayton Associates, LLC, which he founded in January 1996 to provide venture capital to start-up companies. He is a veteran leader in the field of health care, having founded or chaired businesses such as HealthTrust, Inc., PharmMD and HCA.
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