So, before we get into the fun stuff, let me express my condolences to Interactive Health’s non-management employees, who probably had no idea their employer was living a lie. For them, I will make pdfs of my books on outcomes measurement free, provide a free coaching session on outcomes measurement, and basically try to be as helpful as possible in this job market. Just ping me on linkedin.

To paraphrase the immortal words of the great philosopher George Carlin, consider how stupid the average wellness vendor is. Now realize that half of them are stupider.

The winner in this race to the bottom?  Interactive Health, winning Deplorables Awards in 2017 and 2018.

Yesterday, in a shocking display of efficient markets, Interactive Health (IH) went bankrupt, stiffing enough creditors to make a President blush. I do feel badly for those creditors, though no one should offer credit to a company that can’t even pass its own IQ Test.)

Or perhaps IH ran out of money because they spent so much of it developing their “smoking recession program.”

And, proving that it’s not only great minds that think alike, Interactive Health got this effusive write-up from Ron Goetzel’s outfit. Ron, please never write a glowing case study of Quizzify. I’m not sure we could survive it.

Some of their greatest hits include:

• Interactive Health gives clueless wellness vendors a bad name
• Interactive Health fails fact check by college intern
• Interactive Health breaks its own record for stupidity
• Is Interactive Health’s advice dumb enough to require a warning label?
• Interactive Health botches both its lies and its cover-up
• The very stable geniuses at Interactive Health once again put their very good brains on public display

See a pattern here? If so, then it’s safe to conclude they never would have hired you. You’re overqualified.

Wellness trade association concedes that wellness loses money

The Health Enhancement Research Organization HERO) and all its pilot fish have finally thrown in the towel on defending “pry, poke and prod.” No surprise, given that only one vendor out of 1000 (well, out of 999, I guess) has managed to consistently reduce risk. They (US Preventive Medicine) are too honest to claim savings for it.

Recall the write-up we did on the National Bureau of Economic Research’s wellness study a few weeks ago?  HERO has now accepted its validity, by refusing to comment on it. What alternative did they have? The dilemma for these people was that every single one of them used the following, same, observation to diss the study when it reported initial results:

• The National Business Group on Health (financed by wellness vendors, of course) said: “The lack of first-year cost savings should not be surprising.”
• Paul Terry, Prevaricator-in-Chief of the wellness industry promotional journal, said it was only a “1-year program and that no one familiar with a socioecological approach would have deemed this intervention to qualify”
• Ron Goetzel, trying to poke holes in what he admitted was a “superb” methodology, said:

Although the Jones et al study was titled “What Do Workplace Wellness Programs Do?” a more appropriate title might have been “What Did the University of Illinois Workplace Wellness Program Do, in a Very Short Amount of Time?”

So what are you supposed to do with all these mentions of a single year (or a “very short period”) once the second year shows the same thing? Here’s what Interactive Health would do…