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“Bitwalking Dollars: Digital Currency Pays People to Walk”
– BBC, November 21, 2015

 An intriguing idea at the intersection of technology, wellness, finance and retail! With the help of Japanese investors, two entrepreneurs have launched a new digital currency (Bitwalking) that will allow walkers to earn 1 BW$ (or $1) for each 10,000 steps (verified by an app). Their idea is to take advantage of the trend for fitness trackers by offering an additional incentive to keep fit, and to partner with sportswear brands, health services, health insurance firms, environmental groups, and potentially advertisers, who could be offered unique insights into the audiences they are targeting.

For many years the world has been waging a “war on obesity” with precious little success. This week Malleret argues that habits look to be changing …slowly. For instance, the president of Coca-Cola North America recently spoke about the “secular decline in carbonated soft drinks,” observing that, “health and wellness is a major enduring trend.” And Mexico City (in a country where 70 percent of adults are overweight) is getting creative: Do 10 squats at a metro or bus station, and you get a ticket for a free ride, an anti-stress ball, pedometer or pack of condoms.

There have been numerous medical studies linking too little sleep with weight gain, but now a new study from researchers at U.C. Berkeley and Columbia University suggests that when you go to bed may be key to that extra weight. Key finding: each hour of later bedtime was associated with a two-point jump in body mass index.

This past week I attended an academic-like gathering in Chicago, Illinois, at a conference called HERO. The acronym stands for “Health Enhancement Research Organization,” but everyone these days only knows it as HERO. I had heard that this was “the” event where one could learn about the latest in employee health management. It seems I was right. HERO is a national nonprofit, and it works to improve the health and wellbeing of workers, their spouses, dependents and retirees. It is a collaboration of over 100 organizations and has been around for nearly 20 years.

Most workplace wellness initiatives focus on physical health. But experts at the Global Wellness Institute’s “Redefining Workplace Wellness” roundtable agreed that given the new “never-stop-working” realities that companies need to get more serious about mental/emotional health. Recent research suggests that companies, post-recession, are really putting the “efficiency” screws on, and trying to get more productivity with less—so a stress and “burnout” epidemic at work has arisen.

This week, a new Global Wellness Institute (GWI) Initiative on the “Future of Workplace Wellness” launched. Chaired by Renee Moorefield, PhD (CEO of Wisdom Works), it brings together top thinkers to identify how wellness can reinvent organizations and how they’re designed and led, and how work itself gets done. Sixteen leaders—from Dr. Fikry Isaac of Johnson & Johnson to Dr. Ken Pelletier of the Universities of Arizona and California, San Francisco—have already joined this project to help the “wellness at work” conversation get more productive and creative.