Friday, August 21: Keep It Strong All Year Long
National Firefighter Health Week is a time to shift your focus to your well-being and realize that you can make the changes needed to live a healthy life. Your health affects everything you do, and you need to make sure you take care of yourself today so you can be there for those that need you tomorrow. Now that you know the risk factors to watch for and the steps to take to begin a healthy lifestyle, you need to keep the momentum going all year long.
There are many things you can do to keep it strong all year long. The resources offered through National Firefighter Health Week provided many tools and ideas you can do on your own or as a department to incorporate healthy habits into your day-to-day life. However, it doesn’t have to stop there. Creating a department-wide health and wellness program will help keep the motivation up year-round and provide a support system to further encourage your efforts.
Adopt the Program
Adopt the Heart-Healthy Firefighter Program at the department level and commit to embarking on a healthy lifestyle and sticking with the program. When you adopt the program, you will have access to special resources and tools to ensure you have everything you need to succeed. And best of all – it’s free!
To adopt the program, go to www.healthy-firefighter.org/atp and register your department. Once a department is registered, personnel from the department can then register individually by linking themselves to the department. You and your department members will then have access to resources including:
Fired Up For Fitness Challenge: This tool allows you to track your hours of fitness and challenges you to meet certain goals over the course of a year. As each benchmark is reached, you will receive a reward to keep you motivated and recognize your hard work.
Securing Sponsors for Department Health and Wellness Programs: This toolkit takes you through the steps needed to identify, reach out to, and follow up with potential sponsors and donors of a department health and wellness program. The toolkit contains sample letters and customizable templates to make reaching out to and following up with sponsors even easier. It also includes tips, talking points, and ideas to help departments through the process. The NVFC developed the toolkit to make securing sponsorship for a department health initiative as undaunting and straight-forward as possible.
Department Pledge: Encourage your entire department to adopt the program by signing the Department Pledge to get and stay healthy. Submit the Pledge to the Heart-Healthy Firefighter Program with 100 percent department compliance and each member of your department will receive a special pin to recognize your commitment to heart-health.
Tools and Resources: The NVFC has compiled all of the tools and resources you need to help you and your department succeed in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Categories of resources include nutrition, fitness, and general health. Whether you are looking for menu planning assistance, exercise examples, risk assessment tools, or something else, you will find it here.
Department Page: Each registered department has its own page that allows personnel to post success stories and photos to keep their department personnel motivated.
Message Board: Connect to a network of first responders from across the country who have also made the commitment to become heart-healthy. Utilize the message board feature to ask questions and share best practices and tips.
Additional Resources for Implementing a Department Program
Department leaders often struggle to implement a health and wellness program due to a variety of reasons, including resistance or lack of motivation from members, the costs associated with implementing a program, and the lack of well-defined requirements. This Guide demonstrates ways to overcome these obstacles, provides direction for developing and implementing a department program, and highlights several existing health and wellness programs and how they have maintained their success over time.
Monthly Challenges
You can keep up motivation and morale for a health and fitness program by making it a challenge among department members. Consider issuing a new health and wellness challenge each month to your department members. Winners of the monthly challenge could receive any number of rewards – from recognition at a department event or on a department bulletin board or newsletter, to a printed award certificate, to a token gift. Local business owners may even be willing to donate products or gift certificates to give to the monthly challenge winners. Coming soon, the Heart-Healthy Firefighter web site will post a new challenge idea or suggestion each month that you can use in your department, or create your own.