Healthiest State awards: Who’s the healthiest of them all?
Iowa’s Healthiest State Initiative on Thursday recognized the winners of its inaugural HSI Awards during a ceremony at the Ron Pearson Center in West Des Moines.
Meredith Corp. received the Large Workplace Award in the competition, which also recognized winners in Small Workplace, Individual, School and Healthy Hometown categories. Meredith offers a health screening program for its employees that provides them with annual personalized reports on health issues they’re improving in and where they need to focus attention.
Other Greater Des Moines-based organizations that were finalists in the Large Workplace category were Des Moines University and Kemin Industries. The University of Iowa was also a finalist. Short videos highlighting organizations’ programs can be found here.
“The Healthiest State Initiative is proud to honor the individuals and organizations who have done tremendous work to improve the overall health and well-being of Iowans,” said Jami Haberl, Healthiest State Initiative executive director. “Becoming the healthiest state in the nation takes time. Each of these award winners have built an excellent foundation for sustainable, healthy habits in their organizations and communities. They have set a great example for other individuals, communities, schools and workplaces.”
The award winners in the other categories are:
Small Workplace — Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health, Mason City.
Individual — Angela Drent, Sioux City.
School — Pierce Elementary, Cedar Rapids.
Healthy Hometown Powered by Wellmark Communities — Cedar Rapids, Mason City, Sioux City.
Healthy Hometown is a set of online tools that HSI launched in November 2016. To date, 117 workplaces, 69 communities and 30 schools have taken the online assessments to learn how to make the healthy choice the easy choice.
Among other highlights from the past year, residents in all 99 counties participated in HSI’s annual walk event, and 15 individuals received Iowa Walking College fellowships to strengthen efforts to make their communities more walkable.