Amesbury employees among the state’s fittest

April 01--AMESBURY -- It may not be easy, but Cindy Yetman has spent the past seven years finding new ways to keep city employees healthy while keeping health insurance premiums in line.

As the chairman of the city's Working on Wellness committee, Yetman was at the helm when the city won Blue Cross Blue Shield's annual Municipal Blue Innovation Award in 2011 and 2013. She has continued to go beyond the call of duty with city employees walking or jogging their way to first place in the Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association inter-municipality Fitbit Challenge in 2015.

"It takes a lot of effort," Yetman said. "But we have gotten all of the unions together and found the benefits of offering wellness activities and wellness programming, not only for the culture of wellbeing in the workplace, but that also carries over to how we use our benefits, which we are using very wisely."

Armed with a $10,000 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Yetman's most recent innovation brings food from Cider Hill Farm to the table, by offering 40 city employees $100 each in Community Supported Agriculture shares to spend on the farm's fruits and vegetables this spring.

'We had a need in terms of health and wellness and Cider Hill is a local treasure," Yetman said. "We did a survey and found out that folks felt they could increase their intake and use of fruits and vegetables, both for their family dining and their own snacking and meal preparation. We figured this was an innovative idea to give access to that."

While Yetman admits it may be hard to quantify her Working on Wellness program's worth to the city from a dollars and cents perspective, she believes an informal conclusion can be made that the steps Amesbury has been taking have proven fruitful.

"We think it is a win-win," Yetman said. "It's a win for the employees and how they are feeling and performing. It is also a win for the city because we have enjoyed single-digit increases in health care premiums over the past seven or eight years. Nationwide, that average is way over the double digits. Ours have even been at zero at times."

According to Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association senior account executive Larry Tereso, out of the 120 cities and towns his company covers, Amesbury is one of the most active and informed.

"They have been very involved," Tereso said. "We have seen lower emergency room admissions happen and more preventative screenings take place. That could just be luck but we'd like to think that (Working on Wellness) has had an impact on it. Amesbury has been a group that has come together and taken Working on Wellness pretty seriously."

Even though she has been retired from her Amesbury High School teaching job for less than a year, Yetman remains busy and has taught nutrition as well as proper meal preparation classes at the senior center over the winter. Yetman said she hopes to teach a class entitled "From Farm to Fitness" this spring.

Jim Sullivan covers Amesbury for The Daily News. He can be reached on Twitter @ndnsully, via email at [email protected] or by phone at 978-961-3145.

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