Presentations made during the conference included the following titles: "Rewarding Healthy Behavior: Incentives in Health Promotion," "Communicating Rewards and Lifestyle Change," "Leveraging Incentives in Health Promotion" and "Engaging Employees in their Health."

“As those title suggest, employers and health care professionals have had empirical and anecdotal evidence of the effect of positive changes in employees’ personal habits and behaviors,” said Health Fairs of America President Alan Kohll. “While it’s difficult to quantify,” he explained, “it’s clear improved employee health has a direct impact on bottom line performance. The reason is constrained – even reduced – employee health care costs. This is magnified significantly by the fact only about 20% of any employee base is responsible for the majority of direct and indirect health care costs.”

By implication, according to Kohll, finding the one employee in five needing change and fostering specific, healthier personal behaviors will have a significant, direct affect on profitability.

“That,” emphasized Kohll, “is why we developed Strategic Health Management, Inc. SHM is a set of tools we use to identify specific areas of need, develop customized solutions and apply them. That includes the ability to find, analyze, guide and support individual employees in that 20% group.”

SHM, said Kohll, is working at the beginning of an entirely new approach to holding down employee health costs. “Much like medicine itself, we’re learning how to attack the problem at its core. The future looks very good.”