What is wellness?
At Alberta Blue Cross®, we’re committed to not only helping maintain your health but promoting your wellness through every age and stage of life. We’re reinventing our benefits to focus on wellness, empowering your potential and playing a bigger role promoting wellness in your community.
Why wellness
A fundamental part of our "Blue For Life®" vision at Alberta Blue Cross® is an expanded focus on wellness—to ensure that the individuals and communities we serve are not only healthy but also well. Viewing the business of health benefits through the lens of wellness has provided us with greater clarity on our evolution from where Alberta Blue Cross® began to where we are going—the evolution from health to wellness.
With health-care spending reaching unsustainable levels across Canada, it’s time for a shift not only in paradigms, but also in personal accountability as we transition from a focus on treatment and rehabilitation to preventive wellness. While our core competency remains benefit plan management and administration, our approach at Alberta Blue Cross® has expanded to incorporate a focus on wellness across all of our products and services.
For plan members
Our commitment to wellness starts with benefit plans that provide a focus on prevention and maintenance to support you in staying well. But our plans now go much further—including the Balance® comprehensive online wellness program. Balance® not only includes health risk assessment tools, health trackers and interactive tutorials, but also provides plan members with the opportunity to receive wellness-inspired rewards ranging from gift cards to fitness equipment.
Learn more about our Balance® program.
In your workplace
Alberta Blue Cross® administers over 5,700 employer group benefit plans designed to deliver flexibility and choice. In many cases, these plans are complemented with Health Spending Accounts to address the diverse needs and interests of employees and Wellness Spending Accounts to support all aspects of employee well-being by reimbursing a broad range of expenses to maintain and enhance wellness.
Our Balance® wellness platform is also available to employers—and contains a number of features for employer group plan sponsors, including the opportunity to access aggregate data on employee population health.
As a champion for workplace wellness, Alberta Blue Cross® chairs the Alberta Workplace Wellness Network and supports a wide range of workplace wellness events including the annual Canadian Mental Health Association’s Working Stronger conference.
Find out more about our approach to employer wellness.
In your community
Beyond our business, we are committed to championing wellness across the communities we serve.
We proudly sponsor
- the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) Youth Run Club—this program is now over 450 schools in 155 communities across Alberta with more than 27,000 children participating;
- the Prescription to Get Active Program—we have seen this program grow to 27 of 42 Primary Care Networks participating, comprising more than 3,000 physicians and more than 140 fitness and recreation facilities across Alberta; and
- the Gift of Play program—we are supporting the installation of painted stencils on playground tarmac surfaces at 140 schools across the province over a four-year period.
We are in partnership with
- the Arthritis Society, Mental Health Association, Diabetes Association, Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society, Liver Foundation and Lung Association—we sponsor health forums and expos attended by thousands of Albertans;
- the Preventable Injury Prevention Campaign—we are working to reduce the thousands of preventable injuries incurred each year in Alberta; and
- the Coalition For a Smoke Free Alberta—we are taking a leading role in reducing tobacco use.
Additionally, through our own Alberta Blue Cross® Healthy Communities Grant Program, we are providing $250,000 in funding annually to organizations across the province for dozens of projects including sports courts, bike trails, skate parks, outdoor gyms and playground projects.
And there’s more to come...
Through 2018 and beyond, Alberta Blue Cross® is undertaking significant work to expand our focus on wellness through a wide range of wellness programs and initiatives for both our customers and all Albertans. Stay tuned…we’re just getting started!
Tell us what you think!
We would appreciate your comments and feedback regarding our expanding focus on wellness. Please share your thoughts with us via email here.