Some 700 employees of the Kentucky Cabinet For Health and Family Services (CHFS) joined in a one-mile walk for the "Get Moving CHFS! kickoff. Get Moving Kentucky!"

Get Moving CHFS! is an activity of the CHFS Worksite Wellness program, which will serve as a pilot project for worksite wellness in state government as part of Governor Ernie Fletcher’s Get Healthy Kentucky! initiative. Teams of CHFS employees will use pedometers to record their physical activity over an 8-week period with the goal of taking enough steps to walk across Kentucky.

“CHFS is leading by example. There is no more appropriate place for state government worksite wellness efforts to begin than the Cabinet for Health and Family Services whose mission is serving the health and quality of life needs for more than 4 million Kentuckians,” said Family Services Cabinet Secretary, Dr. James W. Holsinger. “It’s one thing for us to tell everyone what they need to do, but quite another to actually walk the talk about physical activity, good nutrition, stress management and tobacco cessation. CHFS employees are literally taking a walk to reduce the cost of health care by improving their own health.”

Get Moving CHFS! is funded by Kentucky’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Grant provided through the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The cabinet’s wellness and health promotion program aims to focus attention on wellness and establishing and maintaining good health practices rather than focusing on disease and illness. The goal is to inform and encourage CHFS staff to adopt healthy lifestyles that create a balance between mind, body and spirit and prevent disease and illness.

“Regular exercise is essential to a healthy lifestyle,” Kentucky First Lady Glenna Fletcher said. “It is a habit that should be developed in childhood and carried on throughout life. I am delighted to see that this program will encourage regular exercise among state government employees.”

In November 2004, Secretary Holsinger appointed a 24-member Wellness and Health Promotion Committee made up of cabinet staff at the CHR complex to advise and support the Wellness and Health Promotion Program. There are four subcommittees dedicated to specific issues that collectively address health and wellness in a very broad sense.

The topics the subcommittees will address were selected based on the Healthy Kentuckians 2010 report and the Kentucky Obesity Epidemic 2004 report. They are nutrition, physical activity, stress management and tobacco cessation.

"Get Moving Kentucky! Get Moving CHFS!" is the program’s first activity and is sponsored by the Physical Activity subcommittee with support from the entire Wellness Committee. The eight-week program is based on the University of Kentucky’s Cooperative Extension Service initiative called Get Moving Kentucky!

For more information about Get Moving CHFS!, visit http://chfs.ky.gov/wh.htm or about Get Moving Kentucky!, visit http://www.ca.uky.edu/fcs/factshts/heel-lr.910.pdf.