Aetna Pledges Support for June’s National Employee Wellness Month

HARTFORD, Conn., June 19, 2012 — Aetna (NYSE: AET) today announced it has pledged support for, and is participating in, the fourth annual National Employee Wellness Month. The month-long initiative helps business leaders learn from best practices of how companies are developing successful strategies around prevention and good health to engage employees in healthy behavior change and reduce healthcare costs. 

As an employer, Aetna supports its employees and their family members through benefit plans and health programs that help them lead healthier lives. Recently, Aetna kicked off its annual Get Active Aetna Campaign, a 16-week program aimed at encouraging and inspiring its own employees and their families to take charge of their health.

Get Active Aetna, a companywide fitness and healthy lifestyle choice competition, provides support and positive reinforcement for employees wanting to change their lifestyle habits and achieve personal health goals. Employees use online tools to help track their exercise and healthy eating activities, as well as the activities of their family members. In addition, employees can access quick and easy recipes and personal support from Aetna’s virtual wellness center, which houses a variety of health and lifestyle resources, including virtual personal trainers and fitness and stress-reducing exercise videos.

Since its launch five years ago, participants in Get Active Aetna have walked a total of 18,070,000 miles. That is equal to 725 times around the earth's equator. As part of the kick off for the 2012 Get Active Aetna Campaign, Aetna employee “success stories” – including several employees who lost more than 100 pounds – were featured in a short video that was played for Aetna employees.

Interviews can be scheduled with Aetna employees and the company’s in-house fitness and nutrition experts for reporters who are interested in learning more about the program.

Helping Aetna Members Lead Healthier Lives
As a health insurer, Aetna has been a leader in providing innovative health and wellness products and programs that help members achieve better health and manage health care costs.

Since 2010, Aetna has offered employers a wellness program modeled after the Get Active Aetna campaign, with additional social media elements. Participants can post and respond to challenges, form groups and teams, and get peer support to overcome hurdles and boost motivation. The program has resulted in a 0.78-point body-mass-index (BMI) reduction (roughly 5.54 pounds of weight loss) per person across Aetna’s customers.

Aetna is continuing to promote the use of social media tools in wellness programs with the recent launch of Aetna Everactive, a new social community that brings together virtual health and fitness resources with opportunities to participate in real-life local events. Through this new program, Aetna members get both encouragement and easy-to-follow, step-by-step guides to health and fitness for all fitness levels. They also get integrated access to Active.com®, the leading online community for people who want to discover, participate in and share activities about which they are passionate, and Aetna’s custom version of Active.com Trainer to help coach and motivate users on their fitness journey. Aetna Everactive lets its community members search for fitness activities and things to do in their area (such as walks and runs) by asking them where they want to start.

For small and medium-sized employers, Aetna also recently announced the availability of Aetna Healthy Commitments^SM, an innovative wellness program that provides resources and incentives to help improve employees’ health and well-being while also guaranteeing reductions in health care expenses for the employer. Aetna Healthy Commitments offers multiple packages that can meet employers’ varying needs and budgets by providing tools and programs to ensure employee engagement and participation. The program was also recently made available to Aetna’s Public & Labor customers.

National Employee Wellness Month
More than 140 organizations across the United States and more than 65,000 of their employees have pledged their support to National Employee Wellness Month. This important workplace wellness initiative is sponsored by Virgin HealthMiles, in partnership with the Strategies to Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesity Alliance, the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease and WorldatWork.

Out-of-control healthcare costs are a board-level issue for virtually every U.S. organization.  Costs continue to rise more than 10 percent annually, with no end in sight.  And employees are feeling it, too, paying more of their out of pockets for higher premiums.  Forward-thinking organizations are taking action to control rising healthcare costs by focusing on prevention as a proven strategy to counter the trend. National Employee Wellness Month highlights the powerful role the workplace can play in helping employees make healthy behavior changes, resulting in a positive sustainable impact on costly lifestyle-related disease. Employee wellness programs also enable improvements in employee satisfaction and workplace productivity. 
 
Aetna is participating in National Employee Wellness Month alongside other leading U.S. organizations that are leading by example to support employee health and wellness.  During the month, companies like Aetna will actively promote prevention and good health throughout its organization, and help its employees understand impact and importance of healthy lifestyles.

Find more information and resources about workplace wellness, and suggested ideas to celebrate National Employee Wellness Month at www.nationalemployeewellnessmonth.com.

About Aetna
Aetna is one of the nation's leading diversified health care benefits companies, serving approximately 36.1 million people with information and resources to help them make better informed decisions about their health care. Aetna offers a broad range of traditional, voluntary and consumer-directed health insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental, behavioral health, group life and disability plans, and medical management capabilities, Medicaid health care management services and health information technology services. Our customers include employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, health care providers, governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups and expatriates. For more information, see www.aetna.com.