Health and Personal Finances
Financial Fitness and the Mayo Clinic Health Risk Assessment Use of the Personal Financial Well-Being Scale, 2007, Consumer Interest Annual, Shatwell, Haynes, Hanson & Hanson

TwoMedicine Health and Financial Fitness is a private firm focused on the implementation of worksite focused preventive health strategies in the Rocky Mountain Region. In February of 2006 the firm integrated the Personal Financial Well-Being scale (PFW) into The Mayo Clinic Health Risk Assessment in order to evaluate the relationship between behavioral risk factors that lead to disease and financial distress. The tool was delivered to public and private employees and their spouses throughout Montana and Wyoming, beginning the spring of 2006. This preliminary research examines two questions: (1) The relationship between financial stress and health risks; and (2) the relationship between financial stress and perceived health.

Assessment Tools

A Health Risk Assessment (HRA) is a 197-item questionnaire designed to collect self-reported data concerning an individual’s health behavior, personal health history, family health history, and biomedical screening data (O’Donnell, 2002). The data is warehoused in a computer database where it is used to create an individual report to the end user, and also an aggregate summary report to practitioners. The aggregate data is then used to create a wide variety of intervention programming. The Mayo Clinic Health Risk Assessment is a unique tool because it is completed on the Internet and uses branching logic to customize itself to each participant depending on their earlier responses. The assessment also provides instantaneous reporting to the end user upon completion. TwoMedicine was able to integrate the eight questions of the Personal Financial Well-Being scale (PFW) into the questionnaire. Read more (Word)...