Canadian Health and Wellness Innovations Conference

With stress at an all-time high, we need new ways of working and living. Based on evidence-based knowledge and strategies, this session will help fortify your mind, body, life and workplace as we face today’s unprecedented challenges. You will learn:

• Keys to recognizing, preventing and recovering from burnout (at organizational, team and individual levels)
• Strategies for managing high workloads
• How to create work-life balance in ways that enhance individual well-being and performance at work
• Simple yet powerful tools to improve resilience and boost energy
• The importance of purpose and meaning for enhanced resilience and protection from burnout
• A framework to prioritize what matters most in your work and life.

While psychological illness and injury have recently become much more visible, these conditions aren’t new. They reflect long-standing societal conditions and follow a predictable path—one we can use to effect change on a personal, workplace and societal level. With examples from the 1980s/90s and following the same evidence-based approach used in physical medicine, this session explores the basis of psychological diagnoses and explains why “there is nothing to stigmatize,” providing meaningful strategies for organizations to implement in the workplace.

Leadership can be challenging, and psychologically safe leadership may seem like adding more demands and responsibility—but, in fact, it can make leadership easier. Some leaders are close to burnout or frustrated with what can seem like endless employee demands; others have a real desire to be the best leader they can be. Whether you are a seasoned or potential leader, the tips and techniques in this session can help you succeed with less effort.

COVID-19 pressures have elevated mental health needs to a board-level concern, revealing a fragmented and inadequate support system. Traditional employee assistance programs (EAPs) offer just a handful of sessions, leaving people with longer term needs to navigate a backlogged public system or spotty paramedical coverage on their own. This session will:

• Explore ways to better integrate and align EAPs, benefit plans and new mental health supports so people can get the right help, at the right time, at the right cost
• Show how this integration can streamline administration and reporting for HR and benefits professionals
• Explain how reporting can provide insights into the mental health of your workforce and influence plan design
• Help you develop responsive and effective strategies to address workplace mental health in a digital world.

This presentation will discuss the newly designed assessment framework for mental health apps that establishes standards at a national level. Developed through collaboration with stakeholders with a range of perspectives from across Canada, the assessment framework has more than 450+ criteria across seven domains:

• 1. Data and privacy
• 2. Clinical evidence
• 3. Clinical safety
• 4. Usability and accessibility
• 5. Security and technical stability
• 6. Cultural safety, social responsibility and equity
• 7. Enhanced data sovereignty standards.

Use of telemedicine, iCBT and other virtual health services accelerated rapidly during the pandemic, illustrating both the value and the need. This session explores key technologies that will likely become common items in benefits plan discussions in the next five years, including:

• Home-based services (e.g., home visits by clinicians, lab tests)
• Digital therapeutics, such as drugs and other medical devices that collect data and connect you to 24/7 care
• Remote patient monitoring
• Gene therapy
• Health apps as a complement to care.

Benefit plans rarely leverage one of the most important resources we have—each other. Online peer health communities can expand our network of “people like us” to talk to, share with and learn from. Done right, peer communities can play an important role in better member health as a reliable, inclusive, supportive resource and a natural extension of an existing wellness strategy. This session will provide:

• The evidence that peer support positively impacts both mental and physical health
• The benefits to both plan members and plan sponsors
• Tips to launch a successful online peer community that engages members, supports their health and still respects their privacy.

As society acknowledges the full range of gender identity and expression, benefit plan sponsors need to rethink their approach to gender, including benefit plan design and administration. Attendees at this session will:

• Learn how to meaningfully adapt their language, policies and practices to reflect the spectrum of gender identity/expression and meet legislative requirements
• Know what questions to ask of their insurers to determine how they are treating and costing individuals who identify as other than male or female as well as and why and when to request changes
• Understand what gender-affirming care is and is not covered in the jurisdictions where they operate, and what private products exist to fill the gaps to ensure coverage reflects their population.

The federal government is implementing the first stage of a near-universal national dental plan before the next scheduled federal election. National pharmacare is smaller in scale but includes funding for a rare disease drug strategy and a national formulary. Both initiatives have important impacts on plan sponsors and members. This session will help private payers prepare by answering these questions:

• How will these plans be designed, implemented, financed and governed?
• What effects could they have on the scope, eligibility and cost of employer-sponsored health benefit plans?
• How are benefit carriers engaging and influencing government policymakers and other stakeholders?

Addressing substance use disorders often means navigating a web of comorbid physical and/or mental illness challenges, including chronic pain, mood and anxiety disorders, and trauma. But many plan sponsors don’t realize that their current benefit plan design may be a significant barrier in helping members and their families access the multidisciplinary treatments needed. Using opioid dependency as a case example, this presentation will examine why current plan designs are unintentionally acting as barriers and explore how plan sponsors can take advantage of innovations and nonpharmacological interventions to ensure the best use of benefits dollars while supporting members in times of need.

We spend a lot of time focusing on the physical aspects of wellness, but it’s just as important to keep our minds healthy. Intellectual wellness can improve overall wellness by increasing our brainpower while lowering our risk for life-altering conditions, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. This session will:

• Provide a working definition of intellectual wellness
• Show how it fits into our overall model of health and wellness
• Discuss the impact of dementia and Alzheimer’s on our overall health
• Provide ways to increase intellectual wellness.

Surveys show that benefits are a key driver in attraction and retention. However, employees can’t appreciate the investment you’re making if they don’t access these programs (or even know they exist!). We’ll explore how to build a communication strategy that maximizes the impact of your benefit plan. With case studies and practical tools, we’ll discuss:

• Uncovering communication gaps and measuring results
• The power of personas: Why a one-size-fits-all approach won’t reach your diverse employee group
• Learning from marketing experts to capture interest, educate, drive action and empower employees to access the support they need.

Disability programs in Canada remain important benefits for plan members, but most plan sponsors don’t review their structure and design. This session will provide an overview of common short- and long-term disability designs and key cost drivers, including expectations resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll explore ideas to restructure key plan provisions, such as the elimination period between short term and long term, own occ/any occ definitions, duration of coverage, coverage beyond age 65 and the role of self-insurance.