Quest Diagnostics Receives Elite Corporate Health Champion Designation by the American Diabetes Association

The Quest Diagnostics Lenexa, Kansas, location was named an American Diabetes Association® Elite Health Champion. The Health Champion Designation is part of the Wellness Lives Here initiative, which is designed to inspire and fuel our nation’s healthful habits at work and beyond. This designation recognizes companies and organizations that inspire and encourage organizational well-being.

To qualify for the Health Champion designation, a company or organization must meet the healthy living criteria in three areas:

1. Nutrition and Weight Management: Five of the twelve criteria options, such as offering healthy food choices, promoting nutritional information and providing healthy vending options.
2. Physical Activity: Four of the nine criteria options; participating in the physical activity events of the Association, facilitating walking or biking to work, encouraging taking the stairs, etc.
3. Organizational Well-Being: Having an organizational smoke-free policy and three more of the nine criteria options, such as having a designated wellness program coordinator, a wellness committee, or a contracted wellness company available to staff/members, integrating health topics/information into internal communications, etc.

The health and wellness initiatives of Quest have met the criteria of a Health Champion by including  healthy food options in the cafeteria and at refreshing stations, promoting its biometric testing initiative to employees and their partners, offering employee-led fitness classes, engaging employees in a company-wide wellness program called HealthyQuest, and keeping the facility smoke-free.Quest donates $200,000 to the American Diabetes AssociationLast month, in observance of American Diabetes Association Alert Day™, Quest Diagnostics announced it was collaborating with the American Diabetes Association to donate $1 up to $200,000 to the American Diabetes Association for every employee wellness screening Quest completed on behalf of employers from March 28 through April 27, 2017. On April 20, one week shy of our deadline, we reached our goal of completing 200,000 biometric wellness screenings! With that, Quest will donate $200,000 to the American Diabetes Association to support its mission to lead the charge  against the deadly consequences of diabetes and advocate for those affected by the disease.Quest is committed to preventing type 2 diabetes through identification of prediabetes coupled with the delivery of effective diabetes prevention programs for individuals. Our collaboration with the American Diabetes Association allowed us to leverage our corporate wellness business and national footprint to identify populations within the workforce that are at risk for the disease.In fact, through this campaign of screening more than 250,000 people, we notified 30% of those individuals with a fasting glucose value and/or an hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) value as having a results that land within the prediabetes or type 2 diabetes range (either having a blood glucose measurement greater than or equal to 100mg/dL, or HbA1c value greater than or equal to 5.7%).Additionally, of those with both a fasting glucose and HbA1c value, 35% had a normal fasting glucose, but an elevated HbA1c. Including an HbA1c test in screenings gives participants an idea of their blood glucose over a two to three month span, which may assist in identifying prediabetes and type 2 diabetes more so than just a fasting glucose measurement, which only measures blood glucose at the time the test is performed.Being recognized as an Elite Health Champion is evidence that we take this mission very personally and are implementing programs within Quest to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes for our own employees.To learn more about American Diabetes Association Alert Day, please visit www.diabetes.org/AlertDayQuest.To learn more about this initiative and Quest's Health & Wellness offerings, please visit www.QuestForHealth.com.