June 16, 2004

By: Amber Goldie
Website: http://www.1st-in-wellness.com

Your Ticket to Healthy Living fitness initiative

TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc. has been honored with the 2004 NOVA 7 award for best exercise incentive programming for its Your Ticket to Healthy Living fitness initiative. The award, sponsored by Fitness Management magazine, an industry publication for health club industry professionals will be featured in the April issue of Fitness Management.

Your Ticket to Healthy Living is a nine-month program encouraging employees to incorporate a wide array of healthful habits into their daily lives. Participants receive a book of healthy 'tickets' for the year that offer a minimum of two wellness activities per month and cover a wide array of wellness topics over the course of the year. The program is designed to emphasize a holistic approach to health - not only diet and exercise, but also emotional, social, community and overall wellness.

The program is designed to help employees make health a priority on a daily basis, says Denise Kitchen, vice president of human resources at TAP. The goal is not only to get people to think about eating and exercise habits, but the program also emphasizes the emotional and social parts of wellness that so often fall even farther down the priority list as we all go through our very busy daily lives.

More than 150 employees - nearly 20 percent of employees in TAP headquarters - now participate in the program. With the obesity epidemic now considered the #1 public health concern in the United States, the TAP program strongly encourages participants to make a healthy diet and regular exercise program part of daily life. For example, to earn one of the first 'reward' tickets, new participants were given a pedometer and encouraged to take 10,000 steps a day. Health experts recommend this as an easy way to incorporate a minimum of 30 minutes of activity into a daily routine.

The program also focuses on social and emotional health, offering seminars on fatherhood, adoption awareness and coping strategies for couples who work, as well as highlighting volunteer opportunities for participants.

TAP's mission is to be connected to care - and that includes caring for our employees' health, says H. Thomas Watkins, president of TAP. We are very proud to have received this award and, more importantly, to have encouraged so many employees to make health and wellness a lifelong habit.

About The Author:

Amber Goldie is a successful author and regular contributor to http://www.1st-in-wellness.com.  Obtaining and keeping good health through healthy living, natural healing, great mental health and healthy finances.