Health screening just became much more accessible to all

Health screening has moved with the times. No longer the preserve of just big corporations with equally big budgets, workplace health screens are now available for all shapes and sizes of company.

Priced at a level that ensures diversity and inclusion, health screens are ideal for helping to promote a culture of prevention and self-care. They provide the ultimate in tailored support, providing personalised information, advice and signposting to additional support services where required.

What’s more, they can also be used to help provide a baseline, against which health and wellness progress over time can be measured.

Health Shield’s provision of health screening to ABF The Soldiers’ Charity represents a case in point.

The background

ABF The Soldiers’ Charity, established in 1944, provides support for soldiers, veterans and their immediate families, for life. It spends nearly £10 million a year on charitable outputs, around half going to other charities that provide relevant training and support to soldiers and veterans, and just under half to individuals, with a focus on providing “a hand up, not a hand out”.

The charity has 85 members of staff, across a wide age spectrum, with around half based in London and half spread across 13 regional offices.

They introduced health screens for the senior management board in the first instance, with a view to now rolling out screens to all staff.

The Board consists of two female and five male executives, some ex-military.

Goals and outcomes

The charity wanted to implement annual screens to help raise awareness of individual health and wellbeing, encouraging people to take control of their own health.

Also, in recognition of the fact that absence of senior individuals due to illness is particularly costly to the organisation, they wanted to help their board members cope better with stress. They also wanted to add in some additional blood tests that included liver and kidney assessments.

Robin Bacon, chief of staff at ABF The Soldiers Charity, added: “We took the full 40-minute screens. They were incredibly thorough. We never received that kind of detailed assessment in the army!

“The board was very receptive to the idea of having screens. They were carried out in head office in a private environment.

“We were able to take the health screening reports to our GPs so that they could be added to our records. The screens helped to highlight lots of things that wouldn’t have otherwise come to light.

“For example, one of our individuals who’d been on statins for some time found via the screen that their cholesterol was now off the bottom of the scale, so there was a much reduced need for the medication.

“We also found it comforting that we had access to certain tests, such as that for bowel cancer, that are not always readily available on the NHS depending on where you live.”

Promoting change

Robin also highlighted the motivational benefits of having regular, annual screens.

“There were aspects of the first screen that we all knew we could improve upon by the time of the second. This brings out a competitive nature, which drives the motivation to do things like improve on our visceral fat scores.”

Wider applications

The charity is now working with Health Shield to roll out a slightly shorter version of the health screen to all staff, starting in June with 36 individuals.”

“It’s a great service. The content of the health screens is adapted so that it is appropriate to our personnel and delivered in a way that motivates us to do something about our health,” said Robin.

To find out more about Health Shield’s Workplace Health Screening Programme, talk to your IHC consultant today.