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UA Program in Integrative Medicine Launches Corporate Health Improvement Program

The Corporate Health Improvement Program (CHIP) of the University of Arizona College of Medicine is launching a new research program on Jan. 19-20 to develop and evaluate innovative medical, health-promotion and disease-management programs in the workplace.

The event, which will initiate the third generation of CHIP at the University of Arizona, kicks off Wednesday evening, Jan. 19, at a dinner hosted by Canyon Ranch Health Resort with Dr. Gary Frost, Canyon Ranch executive vice president. On Thursday, Jan. 20, an all-day meeting on campus will feature speakers from the UA Program in Integrative Medicine (PIM) and from the private sector. Speakers include Dr. Kenneth R. Pelletier clinical professor of medicine and founder and director of CHIP; Dr Andrew Weil, founder and director of PIM and co-director of CHIP; and Dr. Victoria Maizes, executive director of PIM. Speakers representing the corporate community are Dr. Ron Z. Goetzel, of Thomson-Medstat and Cornell University, and Dr. Cathy Baase, global medical director for Dow Chemical.

CHIP represents a unique collaboration among the UA College of Medicine and 14 major corporations. Developed originally by Dr. Pelletier at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco in 1984, the program is a response to the need for creative solutions in U.S. business to the unchecked rise in medical-benefits costs.

“Excessive medical costs have added a disproportionate share to the cost of every product and service during the last two decades,” explains Dr. Pelletier. “Since as much as 52 percent of the United States’ annual medical budget of $1.5 trillion (2004) is in the hands of private corporations, there is a major movement under way to determine the relative portion to be expended on true health care, rather than exclusively on disease treatment.”

Dr. Pelletier started CHIP as a focused, select and evolving research program to address specific requests by member companies to conduct research projects in areas of interest to their employees. Initial projects ranged from the first mobile mammography screening project at Levi-Strauss to a five-year evaluation of an innovative preferred-provider organization (PPO) at Southwestern Bell Corporation in conjunction with Johnson & Johnson. In 1990, Dr Pelletier transferred the program to the Stanford University School of Medicine as the Stanford Corporate Health Program. Owing to the growing interest in and success of complementary and alternative therapies, the program has now moved to the UA College of Medicine. CHIP expects to have a major, practical impact on the redesign of medical benefits and employee health programs of its corporate members.

Participating corporations develop projects with the University over a three-to-five-year period. The timeline includes identifying areas of mutual interest; developing, implementing and evaluating mutually agreed upon programs in health promotion within the companies; and conducting full-scale, longitudinal studies.

Results of the program are used to determine which health-promotion and disease-management intervention programs can work most effectively in the managed care, business environment and how such programs can be developed and evaluated in a practical, cost-effective manner. Finally, the results are disseminated to business and other national and international organizations. Once initiated, such programs are self-sustaining as well as a source of financial support for an ongoing program of research and evaluation to improve the delivery and efficacy of medical, health-promotion and disease-management programs.

Among areas of research and development in the program are:

Integrative medicine interventions for back pain and general pain syndromes
Disease management of hypertension and coronary heart disease
Computer and/or telephone health-delivery systems
Early cancer screening, especially mammography for women
Smoking cessation and policy development
Health-promotion programs to reach minorities, dependents and retirees
Alcohol and substance-abuse programs
Dietary and nutritional counseling
Physical-fitness and back-saver programs
Applications of meditation and relaxation for stress management
Reaching small and/or remote work sites

Corporations participating in CHIP include American Specialty Health, Kimberly Clark, Canyon Ranch Resorts, Click Automotive Group, Dow Chemical, Ford Motor Company, General Mills, IBM, Mercer, NASA, National Grid (NGT of London), Prudential, Thomson-Medstat and Scottsdale Hospital, with formal research links and representatives from the University of Texas Medical Center, Galveston, the Health Enhancement Research Organization, the National Business Group on Health and Partnership for Prevention. Among the members of the CHIP National Advisory Board are Professor Alain Enthoven of the Stanford Business School, Dr. James Fries of the Stanford Medical School, Professor Regina Herzlinger of the Harvard Business School and Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding of the UCLA School of Public Health.

For more information, please contact Ms. Darlene Kerr at CHIP at (520) 626-6417.