The Healthy Trucking Association of America says its recently concluded 3rd annual HTAA Healthy Trucking Summit was a success as part of its ongoing campaign to improve the health of the trucking industry and help professional drivers get healthy and live longer lives.
Since the inception of the event in 2009, the HTAA Healthy Trucking Summit has become a source of education and resources aimed at improving the health of our nation’s professional driver population. Each year the HTAA invites trucking fleet safety directors, human resources directors, recruitment and retention managers and other trucking fleet executives and industry leaders to attend the summit and receive information and resources to help drivers improve their health.
The 2011 HTAA Healthy Trucking Summit was held at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center, located at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. The 2011 event featured sessions on obesity and weight loss, sleep disorders, hypertension and heart health, smoking cessation and diabetes, to name a few. Featured speakers include Dr. Benisse Lester, chief medical officer of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, as well as experts in health, wellness and nutrition.
The summit also included several announcements, including the fact that through the partnership between the CCA, the national trade association representing the retail-based health care industry, and the HTAA, retail-based convenient care clinics nationwide will begin offering U.S. Department of Transportation exams, expanded medical treatments and wellness services designed specifically for transportation industry employees. Of the 1,100 clinics in CCA’s membership, nearly 1,000 have committed to engage in the partnership to date.
The HTAA also announced the ongoing development of a health and wellness resources initiative for trucking fleets. Developed to provide safety directors, HR directors and other trucking fleet and trucking association executives with resources for helping their drivers improve and maintain their health, this new initiative includes the development of a health and wellness Web portal designed to be the industry’s most comprehensive Web-based source for trucking specific health and wellness information.
“The HTAA is proud to provide these services to the people who care about improving the health of America’s professional driver population,” says Bill Gordon, HTAA executive director. “We greatly appreciate all the industry support we have received, the enthusiastic participation of this year’s many summit attendees, and the ongoing support of our many outstanding sponsors, as we continue to take great strides on our mission to create a healthy trucking industry.”
Summit sponsors were Take Care Health Systems, a Walgreens health and wellness company; Abbott; Lindora Clinic, a clinical weight management provider; MinuteClinic, the walk-in medical clinic in CVS/pharmacy; and Novo Nordisk. Other summit sponsors included Bose Corp., CardioChek, Platinum Network Solutions, Transcend Sleep Apnea Therapy System, Heartland National, Fusion Sleep, Comfort Ease by Raffel Systems, Somnetics, Brightline Media Group, Sleep Dynamics, Bazi Natural Energy Shot, ViperNet International and AIMS.
