Q. Community Health Charities of New England is offering a free health webinar on the topic “Surviving Life Changes” on May 19. What is the webinar about and how do people participate?
A. The webinar is about how to handle life transitions effectively. Often we think that only negative events in our lives cause stress, anxiety and depression. What we sometimes overlook is that even happy life changes – such as getting married, becoming parents, sending kids off to college, and even retirement – can cause stress, anxiety and depression as well. The webinar will focus on effective strategies for navigating both positive and negative life changes in a way that helps minimize the toll they can take on one’s mental wellbeing.
Community Health Charities of New England (CHCofNE) is offering the “Surviving Life Changes” webinar free to any interested organization nationwide in recognition of National Employee Health & Fitness Day, May 19, 2010. If a company is interested in offering this health webinar to their employees, they can simply contact CHCofNE at 800-344-6071 or visit www.healthcharities.org/slc52010. The web link provides more information about the webinar and a quick way for a company to register. Once a company is registered, CHCofNE can set up the registration link for its employees.
Q. Why is this webinar being marketed to businesses and their employees? It seems like this is a webinar best aimed at individuals.
A. CHCofNE is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving both workplaces and the employees within them. CHCofNE reaches individuals through their workplaces, providing important health and wellness education programs, promoting volunteerism and offering the opportunity to participate in workplace giving that benefits nationally and locally recognized health charities. CHCofNE delivers important health education information to employees in the workplace through its Health Matters at Work program, which includes health webinars.
The “Surviving Life Changes” health webinar, one in a series of health education webinars typically offered only to CHCofNE workplace campaign partners, is open to the first 1,250 individuals or organizations that register. Any organization throughout the U.S. is welcome to participate.
Q. What is Community Health Charities of New England and what is its mission? How does the webinar tie into your mission?
A. CHCofNE, the largest affiliate of the national organization, Community Health Charities of America, is a non-profit organization dedicated to fundraising exclusively for health charities throughout the U.S. to help improve the lives of those with chronic diseases and conditions and to help fund research leading to new treatments and cures. CHCofNE also advances health and wellness in the workplace by conducting workplace giving campaigns, providing health and wellness education programs and promoting volunteerism.
Q. Why is Community Health Charities of New England using the webinar format to get this program across to companies? What makes this an effective tool?
A. Webinars are a highly successful method of delivering messages and programs to a great number of people at one time in multiple workplaces. With an onsite program, a seminar is limited to the size of the room and the number of people employed by a single employer in a single location. It also is dependent on the technology available in a particular venue. By using webinar technology, CHCofNE can reach out to all its workplace partners simultaneously, and those organizations can reach all of their employees simultaneously with the same program and messages. In addition, their employees can participate from the privacy of their own workstations.
Q. Are webinars an effective way to reach a large audience? Are they an inexpensive way to get a message across?
A. Webinars are certainly an effective way to reach large audiences. For instance, CHCofNE utilizes technology that will allow up to 1,250 registrants to attend each webinar – and we know it is even farther reaching than that. For example, one workplace counts as one connection to the webinar, but that workplace could then gather many of its employees in one place and broadcast the webinar live to all of those employees who may or may not have individual computer access. So, even if a webinar is available to 1,250 participants, a much larger audience could actually view it. Yes, webinars are a cost-effective means of communicating messages. All promotion for these online events is managed through electronic media, typically in free formats such as Facebook, Twitter, email and webpage-based promotions. In addition, webinars enable us to travel to the speakers’ locations, thereby mitigating travel time for the speaker.
Q. How long has Community Health Charities of New England been presenting these webinars? How do you measure the success of webinars and how effective they are in getting a message across?
A. CHCofNE has been providing a health education program for the workplace for more than 12 years in the form of lunch-and-learn seminars. In May 2009, the organization rebranded the program and began offering webinars as part of Health Matters at Work. Our webinars address health issues that affect more than 133 million Americans. CHCofNE measures the success of webinars in three ways:
• A company’s willingness to promote the webinar to its employees.
• The actual number of employees who register.
• Positive feedback from employees from all over the country who appreciate the health information and encouragement they receive to be more proactive with their own health care.
Webinars are a highly effective way of getting our message across. Among many other benefits, offering health education webinars enables CHCofNE to partner with our member health charities to feature true experts in the fields being presented.
