For many people diagnosed with diabetes, the daily challenge of managing blood sugar levels can be a real struggle. And while diabetes is dangerous on its own, it also increases the risk for many other serious health problems, including heart, kidney and eye disease. In fact, according to the National Institutes of Health, someone with type 2 diabetes is two to four times more likely to get cardiovascular disease, and 80% of people with diabetes will die from it.

That’s why we’re excited to announce our new partnership with Onduo, a virtual care management solution from Verily, that will help WebMD Health Services participants better manage their daily diabetes care.

Onduo’s virtual care solution will be integrated into WebMD ONE, providing a seamless experience for users. Onduo’s services include support for type 1 and type 2 diabetes, hypertension, achieving a healthy weight, and prediabetes. Together with WebMD’s condition management, health coaching and digital programs, we’ll be able to provide participants with access to devices and telemedicine.

Onduo’s team of health coaches, educators, registered dietitians, pharmacists and telemedicine physicians takes a personalized, whole-person approach to health and builds real relationships with participants to understand their unique lifestyle, needs and preferences. They use that data in real time to create feedback loops with members, learning about their needs and preferences, to guide them to the support they need, when they need it.

A peer-reviewed, four-month study of Onduo for type 2 diabetes with chronic care model use showed significant glycemic improvements, and comorbidity biomarkers, such as systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol and weight.² The study also showed improved diabetes self-care and understanding of its impact on glucose levels for participants.

Combining the strengths of WebMD and Onduo, employers and health plans can now offer a holistic, technology-driven solution focused on improving the management of diabetes and other chronic conditions to enhance overall health and productivity.

For more information about how our partnership with Onduo can help improve your population’s health, contact us at connect@webmd.net.

Loneliness is a now public health crisis. 

In May 2023, U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, released a report on the epidemic of loneliness and isolation in the United States. Calling it a public health crisis, Dr. Murthy explained how loneliness not only affects our mental health, increasing our risk of depression and anxiety, but our physical health, as well. Loneliness has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and dementia. Lacking social connection also increases the risk of premature death by more than 60%.²

Our new partnership with Togetherall offers a unique way for employees to boost social connection and get the mental health support they need.

Togetherall, available through our well-being platform, WebMD ONE, is an online peer-to-peer mental health support community where all types of people can come together to share their feelings, support each other, and begin to improve their mental health.

Togetherall’s support community is available online, 24/7, and is completely anonymous, allowing participants to express themselves freely and openly. Licensed mental health practitioners, called Wall Guides, monitor conversations around-the-clock to ensure the safety of all members and increase the vibrancy of the community

Help for a variety of mental health concerns.

Participants can talk about anything that is causing them emotional distress. This can include anxiety, stress, depression, trauma, feeling low, or feeling out of control. All of these may be triggered by life events such as the loss of a loved one, relationship breakdowns, employment-related issues, financial crisis, sexuality, isolation, alcohol, or drug-related problems.

To participate in the community, participants can post to the whole community, form their own groups, or one-to-one chats. This kind of forum is unique because it allows people to connect with and benefit from others who have gone through similar struggles. It also provides much-needed social connection, relieving loneliness, and fostering hope and resilience. The anonymous nature of the forum can help reach people who may, for a variety of reasons, not be comfortable accessing other forms of mental health support.

Mental health support that is dynamic and personal.

At WebMD, we know that mental health needs look very different from one person to the next and can change depending on where an individual is at any point in time. We believe mental health support should be just as dynamic. We also recognize the pivotal role that social connection and community plays in regaining and maintaining good mental health.

That’s why Togetherall is an ideal complement to the mental health coaching and other support services already provided by WebMD.

For more information about how Togetherall can help improve your population’s mental health, contact us at connect@webmd.net.

What if you could mix up ingredients in different ways to create the building blocks for three amazing meals in under an hour? It’s possible! In our Back to Basics—Mastering Meal Prep for a Healthier You, Chef Jeremy from our partner, Wellbeats (a LifeSpeak company), showed us how to be a meal prep master and make these mouthwatering dishes:

• Shredded chicken tacos with pineapple pico de gallo;
• Sizzling fajita bowls with shaved cabbage, black beans and lime;
• Pineapple-marinated cauliflower medallions with greens.

It was amazing to see how quickly the meals came together. Just a little chopping, sautéing and blending transformed the simple ingredients into meals with loads of veggies, healthy fats and lean protein. They were also beautiful to look at, incorporating virtually every color of the rainbow—which we know is the key to healthy eating.

While we waited for things to cook, Chef Jeremy offered some great tips to make the most of your time in the kitchen:

• The trick to great meal prepping? Use components from the meals you create in different ways. For example, the chicken from the tacos serves as the base of the fajita bowl. And the pineapple pico de gallo becomes the vinaigrette that not only marinates the cauliflower, but also serves as a dressing for the greens.
• Chop or dice an entire ingredient, even if you only need a small amount. Store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator so it’s ready to go when you need it next.
• Want your greens to stay fresh? Once they’re washed and dried, place them in a bowl with a damp paper towel on top and put it in the refrigerator. Greens will stay fresh and crisp for days.
• Love corn tortillas but wish they were softer like flour tortillas? Place them on a grill pan on low heat until they’re warm and flexible.
• Use a pastry blender to shred the chicken for the tacos. This also works for shredding pulled pork.

And about that pineapple. According to Chef Jeremy, the foolproof way to pick a ripe and juicy one is to smell the pineapple. It should smell sweet—like a pineapple!

Check back here for more great cooking demonstrations from our partner, LifeSpeak Inc., In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about how you can help your employees improve their well-being by focusing on nutrition, contact us at connect@webmd.net.

What is Wellbeats?

Wellbeats, a LifeSpeak company, is a leading provider of on-demand, virtual well-being content that is accessible to employees whether they’re in the office, working remotely, or following a hybrid schedule. That’s key for today’s workforce. A June 2022 Gallup study found that five in 10 workers were working hybrid and three in 10 worked exclusively remotely, giving them less opportunity to access onsite well-being programming like fitness centers and in-person seminars.²

Wellbeats has more than 1,400 instructor-led virtual classes that cover fitness, nutrition, and mindfulness. What’s critical is that employees can access them at a pace and schedule that makes sense for their unique lifestyle and schedule. All of these Wellbeats’ offerings are available to participants via the WebMD ONE platform:

Fitness:

• Virtual workouts for every age, gender, interest, and ability level – with approachable instructors that reflect a diversity of ages, races, and body types.
• Goal-based programs such as Lose Weight; Train Your Way to a 5K, Intro to Strength, Healthy Back, and Daily Mobility.
• Fitness assessments and personal statistics to track progress.

Nutrition:

• On-demand access to recipes and classes to help participants learn about and prepare delicious, nutritious foods. Topics include: mood-boosting foods, recipes to support immune health, and healthy snacking.
• Cooking demonstrations and globally-inspired recipe content.

Mindfulness:

• Meditation, yoga, and stress reduction classes to help improve mood and mindset.
  • Guided meditation
  • Restorative yoga
  • Breathing exercises
  • Stress management programs

So, about those New Year’s resolutions…

In addition to creating SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) goals and breaking them down into small, bite-sized steps (like our Daily Habits program), experts say one of the keys to sticking with a New Year’s resolution is to lean into our brain’s natural tendency to form habits.

According to Wendy Wood, author of the book Good Habits, Bad Habits, changing our behaviors isn’t all about sheer willpower.³ There are many things we do each day out of habit so that our brain doesn’t have to think too hard about them – like brushing our teeth or putting on a seatbelt. So, a more successful approach to keeping a resolution is to create a habit.

Take the case of eating healthier. If you work in an office, you might say that on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays you bring a healthy lunch. On Mondays and Fridays you get takeout. In this way, the brain no longer needs to think about what’s for lunch. If it’s a Tuesday, it’s a bag lunch.

Also consider the popular goal of getting more exercise. Habits can help here, too. Psychologist Mark Travers writes, “We can start with a minimum viable action, like going for a walk every day or doing light stretching daily, and build on it progressively. The idea is to incorporate a desired behavior into our roster of default behaviors. Once the change is made, we can move on to more challenging behaviors like going to the gym or running a 5K.”⁴

Similarly, many fitness experts say that getting in the habit of laying out workout clothes the night before a morning workout increases the chances of following through. We’re essentially taking the micro-decisions out of the equation – so our brain is free to focus on actually doing the workout.

Wellbeats can help employees make healthy behaviors a habit.

We’re not promising that giving your employees access to Wellbeats will make every New Year’s resolution stick, but it can definitely help!

Simply having the array of Wellbeats content at employees’ fingertips takes the effort out of choosing from among the many apps and providers out there. In time, it can become a habit to go directly to Wellbeats versus tapping in to multiple providers. And, bundling nutrition, fitness, and mindfulness content into a one-stop shop also makes it easier for people to try out new things with little downside. Finally, being able to track goals and progress over time can help us, as Wood describes it, create “a sort of a mental shortcut to repeat what we did in the past that worked for us and got us some reward.”

Jason Von Bank, Wellbeats President and LifeSpeak COO explains it this way: “This partnership will expand access to Wellbeats for employers and make it even easier for them to help employees and their families make health and wellbeing an integral and ongoing part of their routine.”

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To learn more about Wellbeats, visit www.wellbeats.com, follow on LinkedIn, or check out a sampling of the company’s fitness classes during a Facebook Live session. For guidance on creating a well-being program that works for your employees, visit our website or contact us at connect@webmd.net.

What is chronic pain?

Pain is the body’s way of telling us that something is wrong. There are many sources of pain: musculoskeletal conditions, injuries, migraines, fibromyalgia – to name a few. A certain amount of pain is normal. But when pain lingers for months or years, it can severely impact our quality of life.

A holistic well-being approach to pain management.

Living with daily pain can be both physically and emotionally stressful. Chronic stress can change the levels of stress hormones and neurochemicals in the brain and nervous system, which affect mood, thinking, and behavior.¹ As a result, people with chronic pain tend to suffer from depression, sleep disorders, and anxiety at much greater rates than the general population.

Which means that to truly be effective at managing pain we need to consider the whole person. Like WebMD Health Services, Fern Health believes in a whole-person approach that considers all the aspects of a person’s life that could be impacting pain, like:

• Biological (injury, infection, illness);
• Psychological (sleep, anxiety, depression, fear); and
• Social (work, family, social connections).

All three of these “biopsychosocial” factors can contribute to a cycle of fatigue and depression that can prevent people from fully recovering. And, particularly for musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, evidence-based guidelines for treatment call for both physical and psychological therapies before more invasive medical interventions are considered.

According to Fern Health, helping people understand what’s happening in their body and why results in an “increase in confidence, and the ability to break out of the cycle of fear and anxious feelings, allowing them to reframe their understanding of chronic pain.”

How does the pain management program work?

The Fern Health program, which is completely integrated with the WebMD ONE platform, starts with a 29-question clinically-validated assessment – repeated every 4 weeks – that helps users to identify how pain is impacting their life based on eight different dimensions: pain intensity; pain interference; social connection; mobility; fatigue; depression; anxiety; and sleep.

The assessment results help Fern Health tailor a program to each user based on their unique physical, emotional, and social needs. They then set goals related to core program pillars – exercise therapy, emotional health, daily movement, sleep, and nutrition. A welcome kit soon follows containing helpful tools like exercise bands, a myofascial self-massage tool, and a sleep mask.

Users then embark on a self-paced digital journey that provides education, activities, and life skills alongside high-touch 1:1 support from WebMD Health Services coaches who are certified in pain neuroscience education. Coaches are always available via online chat, and users can also schedule calls on an as-needed basis. A typical treatment plan lasts 8-12 weeks, followed by a maintenance period of up to 9 months when users still have access to all the resources available in their program.

What are the benefits of pain management programs?

Managing pain helps improve overall quality of life for participants, and that’s the most important benefit. Also, since one aspect of well-being often influences another, it’s possible to see health improvements across multiple dimensions of well-being. For example, someone dealing with chronic pain who increases physical activity as a result of the pain management program may lose weight and reduce the risk of becoming diabetic.

There are also tangible benefits to the business. When we feel better we’re likely to be more engaged in our jobs and perform better. Healthcare costs can decrease. Organizations may also see reduced absenteeism and increased presenteeism by equipping employees with the tools to better manage pain so they can bring their whole selves to work. We expect the Fern Health program to be particularly beneficial for our clients with large manufacturing populations who often suffer from repetitive motion injuries and other musculoskeletal pain.