Learn about the research behind our social approach to health and the latest trends in the corporate wellness industry.
Webinars
Health Coaching: Past, Present, and Future
Is telephonic coaching losing favor as an employee wellness component? If it is, what are the other options? If it is not, what role should it continue to play? Watch this webinar to learn more about the past and present of health coaching, and hear what the future of health coaching may look like.
Healthy Behaviors are Contagious
When someone exercises, the people around them are more likely to do so as well. This may seem intuitive, but groundbreaking new research is showing us just how powerful these forces are and igniting our imagination about how we can use this knowledge to improve the health of large populations. On this webinar, hear directly from researchers about how good health spreads through social networks, and learn how you can use this information at your company.
How Health Plans Are Using Social Media to Engage Their Members In Healthy Activities
Social media is a fun and effective way for businesses of all kinds to reach current and potential customers. In this webinar, we explore how some of America’s most innovative health insurance companies are using the power of social media to engage their members and their communities in healthy activities.
8 Innovations That Are Transforming Corporate Wellness Programs
Corporate wellness is rapidly changing with advances in technology and the transfer of consumer tools into the enterprise environment. In this webinar ShapeUp shares the major areas of innovation occurring in the wellness space so you can make sense of what’s going on, learn new ways to tackle the challenges you face, and keep an eye toward the future.
Social vs. Financial Incentives: The Burning Question In Employee Wellness
On this webinar we explore the best research about the effect of social and financial incentives on health, discuss innovative ideas about how best to reward your employees for wellness, hear from several large employers about their incentives experience, and share ShapeUp’s own views on the burning question of social versus financial incentives.
How Your Most Connected Employees Can Help You Spread Good Health
New research on social networks is changing the way we think about population health and how behaviors spread from person to person. This has tremendous implications for corporate wellness programs. On this webinar, ShapeUp teamed with Activate Networks, the social network analytics company founded by Harvard researcher Dr. Nicholas Christakis, to discuss how social network mapping can be combined with a team-based wellness program to spread healthy behaviors within your company.
Debating the Results of the ShapeUp Employer Wellness Survey
Watch this ShapeUp webinar to gain new insights into how large employers are approaching employee wellness, how they can do better, and to hear a moderated conversation that discusses how businesses are using wellness programs to meet their corporate objectives.
How KeyBank Succeeded at Making Wellness Social
Want to hear directly from a large, self-insured employer about its experience making wellness social? Watch this webinar that features Sandy Rosenberg, VP, Clinical Manger, Employee Benefits at KeyBank, a Cleveland–based company with more than 15,000 employees.
How Competitions & Social Games Can Drive Employee Wellness
Social gaming mechanics — what are they and how can they work for your employee wellness program? Watch this webinar to learn how you can use social gaming mechanics to enhance employee wellness and your company at large.
The Impact of Social Networking on Wellness Program Engagement
Are you a wellness manager or benefits director struggling with employee engagement? Feel like you’ve run out of options for boosting participation? Then watch this free ShapeUp webinar that explores how and why a social approach to wellness can have a dramatic impact on your program engagement.
How Social Networking Can Help You Achieve Wellness Success
Leading employers and health plans have discovered that social networking strategies are the key to the success of their corporate wellness programs. We’ve heard a lot about social networking lately, but what does it really mean and, more importantly, how can it help you achieve your objectives?
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Case Studies
UnitedHealth Group Fall For Fitness with OptumHealth and ShapeUp
An innovative social wellness platform achieves unprecedented engagement, biometric outcomes and return on investment (ROI) in UnitedHealth Group’s Fall for Fitness challenge. (PDF)
KeyBank
KeyBank sought to activate its largely sedentary workforce with an easy and engaging approach to exercise. ShapeUp was a perfect fit for KeyBank, as the company’s employees are extremely tech-savvy and quickly adopted ShapeUp’s online, social networking-based program.
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Video
Worksite Wellness - The Future Is Now
Dr. Rajiv Kumar, founder and chief medical officer of ShapeUp delivers the keynote address at the 2nd annual Southcoast Worksite Health and Wellness Collaborative conference, "Worksite Wellness: The Future Is Now."
ShapeUp on Fox News
The first team-based social networking health and wellness company helps employees lose weight and get in shape.
Cleveland Clinic Wellness - Shape Up and Go
Cleveland Clinic employees join the Shape Up and Go program to lose weight, exercise and have fun while doing it.
James Fowler Discusses Power of Social Networks On Our Health
Dr. James Fowler, author of Connected – The Surprising Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, recently appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss his research findings and why they prove that the only way to truly improve our health is to work together with our friends, family, and colleagues.
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Audio
Dr. Kumar on Healthy Business Radio
Dr. Rajiv Kumar talks about ShapeUp's platform, inception, and ideology on Healthy Business Radio.
Dr. Rajiv Kumar Interviewed on Tech Talk
Dr. Rajiv Kuman speaks with Craig Peterson of Tech Talk about obesity, social networks, and how wellness programs can help companies stay healthy.
Tips for your wellness program
ShapeUp's founder and chief medical officer Dr. Rajiv Kumar was a guest on HR Happy Hour, educating listeners on "Taking Wellness Social." He talks about the history of ShapeUp, engagement hurdles, the power of social networks, and healthy peer pressure.
Healthcare 2.0: People Look For Cures And Community Online
According to a survey by Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, 61 percent of Americans turn to the web for online medical advice and information. And 20 percent of Americans have posted information about their health conditions at online forums.
Can Social Networking Work in Health Promotion Activities?
Rajiv Kumar, co-founder of ShapeUp, explained on Healthy Business Radio why his program is unique among online health participation/tracking programs.
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Articles
Sprint Expands Wellness Efforts Through Social Media
Telecom giant Sprint estimates it saved approximately $1.1 million through a social media wellness challenge it launched last summer on a social platform powered by ShapeUp.
The Healthy Network
Social media not only builds friendships; it can also build healthier bodies.
Healthleaders: Personalities: Social Wellness
As a first-year med student at Brown University in 2005, Rajiv Kumar felt frustrated by the preventable diseases that plague Americans who lead unhealthy lifestyles.
Motivating Through Comparative Data, Messaging and Educational Information
Employee Engagement Series:: Employers are evaluating different cost effective approaches that leverage technology to engage employees in their health.
The Right Fit: How an Employee Wellness Program Boosted Health and Morale
FM Global signed on with Shape Up The Nation in 2008, offering the program to nearly 4,000 employees in the United States and Canada.
CEO on a Running Mission
In 2006 Dean Karnazes ran 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states. When Martin Franklin, the 45-year old CEO of a 2.76 billion dollar conglomerate called the Jarden Corporation, told his son about Karnazes’ mad running feat, the boy responded, “You know, you should do that with your company."
Slimming Down Employees to Cut Costs
Companies are targeting employee fitness to contain health-care costs, creating individualized plans using wearable technology and Web sites.
Embracing the Revolution: Using Social Networking to Power Your Employee Wellness Program
Benefits and wellness professionals are also harnessing the power of connectivity to drive participation, long-term engagement and successful outcomes in employee wellness programs.
The Power of Connectivity
Social networking provides a better way to engage employees in wellness programs.
How Social Networking works for a Corporate Wellness Program
ShapeUp, whose wellness platform is designed to connect employees of all fitness levels with others who share similar interests, has pioneered an innovative approach to corporate wellness.
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Reports
Employers Get Their Health Game On
Although workplace wellness has existed for well over four decades, advances in technology have recently and rapidly changed the way employee health promotion programs are delivered. In the past five years in particular, companies have begun adopting gaming technology in the service of wellness, making the achievement of healthy goals more approachable, engaging, social, and fun. Read this report to learn more.
The ShapeUp Annual Employer Wellness Survey
This annual report, a result of ShapeUp's annual employer wellness survey, illuminates how large self-insured businesses approach and deploy employee wellness programs to meet their corporate objectives and explores how they can do better.
White Paper: How Social Networks Spread Employee Wellness
Social networking has arrived in health care, and the ramifications are profound. Corporate wellness managers are successfully using social technology to harness the power of employee networks in order to transform the health of their workforces.
Report: How To Add Social Networking To Your Wellness Program
ShapeUp has released this new report about how you can take the core concepts of social networking and apply them to your wellness program in a way that drives massive engagement, significant health outcomes, and a larger return–on–investment.
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Research
Teammates and Social Influence Affect Weight Loss Outcomes in a Team-Based Weight Loss Competition
When we work together with the people in our social network, we’re more likely to achieve our health goals, including weight loss.
A statewide intervention reduces BMI in adults: Shape Up Rhode Island results
A study in Obesity shows that participants in our sister program achieve clinically significant weight loss by working together on teams.
Working on Wellness
ShapeUp is part of an ongoing $3.2 million worksite wellness research program funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years
“Smoking– and alcohol cessation programs and weight–loss interventions that provide peer support — that is, that modify the person’s social network — are more successful than those that do not. People are connected, and so their health is connected.” — Christakis NA, Fowler JH.N Engl J Med. 2007 Jul 26
The collective dynamics of smoking in a large social network
“Cessation of smoking in one person appears to be highly relevant to the smoking behavior of others nearby in the social network.” — Christakis NA, Fowler JH.N Engl J Med. 2008 May 22
Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years
“People’s happiness depends on the happiness of others to whom they are connected. This provides further justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective phenomenon.” — Fowler JH, Christakis NA.BMJ. 2008 Dec 4
Social Tools Prove Powerful for Online Health Programs
In an era when social networking sites and blogs are visited by three quarters of online users, it's only natural that the medical profession would also tap into the power of social media tools.
Online Social Networking by Patients with Diabetes
Several disease-specific information exchanges now exist on Facebook and other online social networking sites. These new sources of knowledge, support, and engagement have become important for patients living with chronic disease, yet the quality and content of the information provided in these digital arenas are poorly understood.
Better health through social networking
Research shows how the nature of your social network influences your health behavior.
The Future of Health Care Is Social
Health care is a personal issue that has become wholly public, but what's often lost is a clear vision about how medicine could work in the future.
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