The 41-year-old special education teacher and coach from Mesa, Rhode lost over 49% of his starting weight during the six-month competition and says he wants to focus his attention now on motivating others to achieve their life’s goals.

 “The PHOENIX MARATHON is the perfect event for me to support for two reasons,” Rhode said. “It gives me an opportunity to promote physical fitness and healthy living in my hometown community and, equally important to me as a teacher, the PHOENIX MARATHON will raise funds to benefit AzBrainfood, which is a wonderful charity providing nutritional weekend meals for Arizona students who come from homes where food is scarce.”

AzBrainfood (www.azbrainfood.org) discretely provides backpacks filled with food to hungry children each weekend as they leave school on Friday afternoons.

The PHOENIX MARATHON will begin in the foothills above the Valley of the Sun under the iconic, white PHOENIX sign located in northeast Mesa and will descend to a course set along the banks of the Salt River. The 2012 first-year event will feature a half-marathon, 10k and Kids 1K with a full marathon race set for March 2013.

Rhode says he looks forward to joining with other Arizonans and runners from around the country in the PHOENIX MARATHON and sees the race as an opportunity to prepare for and train for the LA Marathon later in March, which he announced as his next goal following his victory as the bigger loser.

“But my strongest reason for helping get this new, exciting marathon launched is to help the hundred of elementary school children in our community who, without the help of AzBrainfood, would come to school on Monday mornings without having received the proper nutrition necessary to focus on their school work and be prepared to learn their lessons,” Rhode stated. “This is literally an opportunity to ‘run for food’ and benefit our community.”

Individuals interested in joining Rhode in the PHOENIX MARATHON can visit www.PHXmarathon.com to register for any of the three events.

“I hope we’ll have a huge turnout to this inaugural event,” Rhode concluded. “I’ll be there and I look forward to running this great course with fellow health and exercise enthusiasts.”

We all are aware of the dangers of not only texting but using our cell phones while driving…but many of us forget.  Many of us think, “One quick text won’t cause an accident” or “I won’t respond to the email but I need to read it”.
Here are few statistics and a website to remind us all, “It’s not worth it!”

• 25% of all Crashes in 2009 were caused by distracted drivers (Cell phones #1 distraction)
• 18% of all Fatal crashes involved a cell phone
• Using a cell phone while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent.
• Drivers that use cell phone are 4 times more likely to get into a crash.

To hear some stories and to help raise awareness of the dangers of texting while driving, visit www.txtresponsibly.org.

While fire may be a common worry among homeowners, claims data from Travelers suggests their homes could be as much as 10 times more likely to be damaged by water than by fire.

Fortunately, much of this water-related damage can be prevented, and taking a few simple home maintenance steps can help increase the chances of keeping a property safe.

Travelers recently analyzed its homeowners insurance claims in North Carolina, excluding claims related to catastrophes, and found that damage caused by water accounted for 28 percent of its property claims in the state, compared to three percent for fire. Furthermore, of those water damage claims, weather accounted for only five percent, meaning that proper maintenance within the home may help homeowners avoid some of these problems.

“When considering annual household cleaning projects, it’s a great time to inspect and perform maintenance on household systems and appliances,” said Ron Stephens, Regional Vice President for Travelers. “Checking washing machine hoses, ice maker connections and the plumbing around water heaters are a few simple actions you can take to prevent both damages and a lot of headaches.”

After examining the most common causes of water damage for Travelers customers in North Carolina, claim and risk management professionals from Travelers have developed a number of easy steps homeowners can take to help avoid many of these non-weather-related water problems. The following list provides preventive measures to help avoid the top four common causes of non-weather related water damage:

• Leaks from washing machine hoses

  Washing machine hoses should be inspected annually and replaced every five years – or immediately, if there are any signs of cracking or bulging.

• Leaky plumbing around water heaters

  Plumbing should be inspected annually and repaired if there are any signs of leaks or corrosion. When possible, water heaters should be installed in an area with floor drains to minimize damage if leaks should occur.

• Leaks from refrigerator ice machines

  Ice maker connections, usually located behind the refrigerator, should be inspected annually and hoses replaced if they appear cracked or corroded.

• Clogged drain lines on air conditioning units

  Air conditioning drain lines should be checked yearly.

Wellness issues important to you – brought to you by the insurance specialists at Arnett Insurance Services

If you believe that employee health and wellness is truly important to your company’s success, you may want to take your wellness program one step further by incorporating wellness into your company mission statement, value proposition or goals. To hold employees accountable, consider adding a wellness component to your annual employee performance review process.

How to Get Started

If you decide this approach may be a good step for your company, start at the top. Add some type of wellness statement to your published corporate vision, mission, beliefs or goals. This demonstrates to management, employees and the community that employee wellness is a priority.

The next step is incorporating wellness into performance reviews. This should not be in the form of reaching a certain weight or focused on fitness level or physical appearance. Rather, encourage each employee to formulate one or more wellness goals that are relevant and beneficial for achieving or maintaining their own healthy lifestyle.
Management and supervisors should not only have their own goals, but should also be held responsible for being a positive wellness leader. This includes following through on their own goals and helping their subordinates achieve success as well. You may want to assess manager performance on each of those two factors separately, giving an overall larger weight to wellness objectives than general employees.

For employee goals, have each supervisor work with his or her subordinates to formulate relevant, meaningful goals. This could include participation in certain wellness programs, attending certain classes or meetings, achieving certain safety objectives, quitting smoking or whatever your company deems appropriate and measurable.

Formulating Your Program

An important aspect to the success of this initiative will be supervisor training and clearly defined examples of what is acceptable and unacceptable for a goal. Simultaneously, it is vital that employees have the freedom to choose goals that truly represent their lives and health needs, so that each employee feels he or she is getting a benefit from meeting the goal and that being assessed on the goal is fair. Examples of employee goals may include:

• Cooking healthy meals with the family three times a week
• Drinking water during the day at work, instead of soda or juice
• Completing the company-sponsored smoking cessation program
• Taking company-sponsored safety classes related to the employee’s job
• Participating in a disease management program to manage a chronic condition
• Logging a certain number of daily or weekly steps on a pedometer

The relationship between the supervisor and employee will be especially important in evaluating this goal. Together, they will need to not only establish the goal(s), but also decide how the goal will be documented throughout the year and how success will be measured. For instance, the sample goals listed above can each be tracked and/or measured in some way on a regular basis. Develop a process to have upper management review and approve each goal, to ensure consistency in standards and evaluation throughout the company. Due to the unique nature of some employees’ goals, this many not be an easy process; the more guidelines you can establish beforehand, the easier this will be for all parties.

Be sure to communicate clearly with employees when deciding to incorporate wellness into corporate and individual performance goals. Emphasize foremost how you see wellness as integral to your company’s success and explain why. Demonstrate how tying wellness to performance will allow each employee to contribute more to the company, while also helping them develop healthier, safer habits that will benefit their own lives.

Also important to this initiative is having a comprehensive wellness program already in place, so that your employees have the resources to help them accomplish their goals. Using the above goal examples, each could easily be supported by a company program, whether it is nutrition education and access to healthy recipes, company-sponsored classes or free pedometers for all employees.

One of the biggest concerns facing employers this time of year is the spread of the flu and in particular, the threat of H1N1 virus. Companies may face huge increases in absenteeism and are being advised to take precautions by implementing a plan in advance. This year, employers may also want to consider an alternative or revised sick leave plan, as it is important that ill workers feel able to stay home without any retribution. It is important to not have employees return to work too early when they might still be contagious or may not have fully recovered from their illness. It may be difficult during these tough economic times to implement flexible leave policies, however, doing so will help prevent an outbreak among your employees, which can be extremely costly to any business.

Below is a sampling of tips distributed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

To Prepare for Heavy Absenteeism:

• Develop flexible leave policies for workers who must stay home to care for other family members.
• Have an understanding of your organization’s normal seasonal absenteeism rates and know how to monitor your personnel for any unusual increases through the fall and winter.
• Cross-train personnel to perform essential functions so the workplace can operate even if key staff members are absent.
• Explore whether you can establish policies and practices such as telecommuting and flexible work hours.
• Ensure that you have the information technology and infrastructure needed to support multiple employees working from home.

To Help Keep Employees Healthy:

• Ask sick workers to stay home for seven days or until they have been symptom-free for 24 hours.
• Encourage hand washing and covering coughs and sneezes.
• Clean commonly touched surfaces regularly.
• Encourage employees to get vaccinated both for the seasonal flu and for H1N1.
• Consider canceling nonessential business travel.

Know the Difference between Cold and H1N1 Flu Symptoms

- Stephanie O’Dell