Health Risk Assessments | Scientific Validity

Scientific Validity

PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS

The goal of the Personal Wellness Profile™ (PWP) assessment and personalized report is to create a profile of a person's health and lifestyle that identifies their health risks and makes recommendations for lifestyle changes to improve their health and prevent disease. A valuable health counseling tool, PWP can be used to create a proactive wellness prevention plan for individuals, similar to how a physical exam is used by physicians to create a care plan for recovering from an illness.

PWP looks at both lifestyle factors and risk factors. Lifestyle factors addressed in the assessment have been scientifically established as determinants of health and longevity. Risk factors linked to disease are also assessed in PWP because published research shows that people with certain health risks, such as high blood pressure, are linked to a higher risk of disease, such as stroke and heart disease.

Along with assessing risks, PWP also assesses a person's interest in making changes – or their "readiness to change" – so that appropriate interventions can be offered according to the stage they are in. In addition, the application stores the data necessary to establish a baseline for comparing changes over time in such areas as a person's BMI, aerobic fitness level, eating habits, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure, to name a few. This is necessary for documenting changes and health improvements for both individuals and organizations as a whole.

The Personal Wellness Profile™ assessment is compliant with the requirements of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA).

VALIDATION

The University of Florida has conducted a content validation of PWP and concluded it had high validity as a wellness assessment tool. The Personal Wellness Profile™ assessment has also been thoroughly reviewed and certified by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) as a high-quality health risk assessment.

Our primary goal is not to rely on our own validity studies, but rather to base our health risk assessment (HRA) questions on established, published research that already shows a significant relationship to a risk or health factor. We also take into account recommendations by national health standards and guidelines. For each risk profile, we find the best and most widely accepted guidelines. We feel this is a better approach than trying to establish and validate our own standards. For example:

•	Our fitness questions are based on the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association fitness standards and guidelines.

•	Our coronary risk factors are taken from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute guidelines including the ATP-3 guidelines on coronary risk assessment and recommendations.

•	For assessing diabetes risk, we rely on the American Diabetes Association guidelines for risk assessment and guidelines for prevention, which also agree with standards set by the NIH.

UPDATES & ENHANCEMENTS

The PWP assessment is reviewed and updated regularly (monthly) by a team of doctors, health education specialists, nurses, nutritionists, and other health specialists. Since more than 1,000 health professionals regularly use our assessment tools, they are under constant surveillance and updating. We are vigilant about keeping all of our recommendations and guidelines up to date. Examples of recent updates include:

•	Adding the new fitness standards published by ACSM and AHA.

•	Incorporating new guidelines published by the ADA for diagnosing diabetes using hemoglobin A1C test values.

•	Modifying the assessment to be GINA-compliant by making family health history questions able to be hidden.

•	Adding questions allowing the PWP to project potential cost savings for organizations in the areas of healthcare claims, improved productivity, and decreased work-loss time when poor health practices are remedied and risks are improved.

•	Adding the most recent aerobic capacity norms published by ACSM.

•	Making the PWP accessible through a wellness portal, allowing integration with online interventions, an online wellness library, online activity tracking programs, and a streaming video that walks participants through all the topics covered in their PWP report and ensures they understand how to interpret their results.

•	Creating links on the PWP online participant report to provide more in-depth explanations on all risks and recommendations made throughout the report (added over 200 pages of content for personal self-study and edification).

•	Added additional querying ability for administrators to query the database to find groups of people for follow-up with specific health needs and interests.

•	Upgrading the look and feel of the personal report and modifying language for ease of reading.

•	Adding a counselor summary report for use by health professionals, including health coaches, when working one-on-one with participants.

CUSTOMIZATION

There are many configuration options built into the HRA that allow it to be highly customizable and able to meet specific client needs. Hiding questions you don't want displayed, adding additional questions and response options to what is already present in the HRA, and branding the site to your own look and feel are just a few of the configurable items present in the system. When development resources allow, additional customization requests may also be considered. The cost for such customizations is determined by how extensive the requested changes are. Quotes for custom development can be obtained by speaking with your Regional Manager of Business Development.