New international health think tank launches to help people live healthier, longer lives while reducing costs
6th June 2013: PruHealth and PruProtect have today announced the launch of the Vitality Institute, a new international healthcare think tank. It will bring together influential thought leaders from across the worlds of academia, business, NGOs and government, to start a global debate about the power of prevention as a sustainable solution to the growing personal, social and economic burden of chronic disease. The work of the Vitality Institute will focus on finding innovative, evidence-based solutions that motivate people to adopt healthy behaviours, which in turn will improve quality of life, reduce associated mortality rates, and increase productivity within the working population.
The Vitality Institute is an initiative of Discovery, the South African financial services company and its subsidiaries in the UK (PruHealth and PruProtect), USA (The Vitality Group and Humana) and China (Ping An), which combine to deliver the Vitality programme to almost five million people, making it the largest incentive-led integrated wellness programme in the world. The mission of the Vitality Institute is to advance knowledge about the evolving science and art of chronic disease prevention and health promotion in order to build healthier societies through effective programmes.
According to Neville Koopowitz, CEO, PruHealth: “We have evidence that we can reverse negative chronic disease health trends, by motivating and rewarding healthy behaviours. Our best success has built on the data and experience from public health, academia, entrepreneurs and private enterprise. This commitment to The Vitality Institute is an acknowledgment that research and collaboration across sectors is a critical step toward improving quality and length of life and, as a consequence, reducing health care costs. The Vitality Institute is the natural next step to build on the learning already derived from our Vitality wellness programme. We now want to evolve this knowledge to see how it can be applied to benefit more people in more communities on a global basis.”
Two broad streams of work will be delivered by the new Institute. One will be to gather the best experts from around the world across the private and public sectors, as well as those working on the boundaries of innovation, science and technology, to share best practices and conceive new approaches to health promotion that can make a significant difference both in the immediate future as well as over the long-term.
Secondly, it will conduct research and identify the evidence that will allow it to put in place scalable programmes to pre-empt disease, with a particular focus on obesity and diabetes, tobacco use and mental health.
The Vitality Institute will be lead by Derek Yach, who has an eminent history of working in the international healthcare arena, including the World Health Organisation (WHO) where he was Executive Director for Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health, PepsiCo, where he was SVP Global Health and Agriculture Policy and the Rockefeller Foundation, where he headed global health. He was also Professor of Global Health at Yale University and established the Centre for Epidemiological Research at the South African Medical Research Council.
According to Derek Yach, Senior Vice President, The Vitality Group and Executive Director of the Vitality Institute: “As a global society, we have made much progress in disease intervention. Proof of this is that people are living longer, which is testament to the organized approach that hospitals, pharmacies, governments and biopharmaceutical manufacturers have made in saving lives. It is now time to rally across sectors to model that systemized approach to drive change in health promotion that leads to preventing disease and driving improved outcomes and reduced costs for individuals, businesses and society.”
Focusing on health promotion to improve health outcomes and mitigate escalating costs is a growing and proven strategy. Vitality has paved the way for a data-driven approach to measurable prevention and it has been recognized for its effectiveness in incentivising healthy behaviours through the World Economic Forum’s Workplace Wellness Alliance, which noted that its science-based programs have ‘shown a positive impact on healthcare costs’.[1]
For more information about The Vitality Institute, visit www.thevitalityinstitute.org
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Notes to editors:
About PruHealth:
· PruHealth is a leading private medical insurance and Vitality wellness programme provider which launched in the UK in 2004 in response to a growing need for consumer-directed private medical insurance products. It is a joint venture between UK insurer, Prudential and Discovery, a listed company operating in the health, wellness, life, investment and financial services markets in South Africa, UK, USA and China.
· The Vitality programme helps people understand how they can improve their own personal health, makes it cheaper and easier for them to get healthy and gives rewards to keep them motivated, through a range of tools and discounts.
· Vitality is scientifically proven to work through many studies. For example, one prominent research study, was an independent five-year retrospective longitudinal study in conjunction with Thomas Gaziono, MD, Harvard Medical School, which was completed in 2011. The study examined the gym visits and participation in fitness activities of over 300,000 Vitality members over a three year period and the probability of hospital admission and costs of hospital admission in the subsequent two years (years 4–5). Those who participated in Vitality were more likely to change behaviour and be healthier and were consequently less likely to be admitted to hospital.
About PruProtect:
· Launched in September 2007, PruProtect is an extension of the existing joint venture between Prudential UK and Discovery, which began with PruHealth. Unique to the current UK protection market, the PruProtect suite of products includes Life Cover, Income Protection Cover and severity based Serious Illness Cover, additional benefits and Business Protection. PruProtect is based on the innovative Vitality programme and is designed to encourage customers to take control of their own health and wellbeing. Vitality gives customersthe potential to manage future premiums. By recognising people's efforts to look after themselves, PruProtect is able to offer a more comprehensive set of benefits than traditional providers at a very competitive price.
[1] World Economic Forum – “The Workplace Wellness Alliance – Making the Right Investment: Employee Health and the Power of Metrics In Collaboration with FTI Consulting”. January 2013.