What is a health promotion program (HPP) and how does it differ from an employee assistance program (EAP)?
A health promotion program’s main concern is “health promotion and preventative medicine rather than treatment,” which is the focus of an EAP (The Corporate Ethics Monitor, Volume 1, Issue 3, page 41). An HPP tends to “employ different professionals [than an EAP]: recreation therapists, vocational counsellors and nutritionists as distinct from psychologists, social workers and addiction counsellors” (The Corporate Ethics Monitor, Volume 1, Issue 3, page 41). Often peer counselling or group seminars are involved in providing employees with a broad range of programs including weight loss, stress management, healthy living classes, smoking cessation, exercise classes, fitness club subsidies, back care and CPR seminars, and on-site fitness facilities. As a general distinction between an EAP and an HPP, the former focuses on treatment and the latter on prevention. An HPP can be cost effective because a healthy employee is more likely to perform his or her job well, be less frequently off wo
