Health and wealth are not so different. Studies have shown that those who have higher incomes live healthier life styles and those who have lower incomes live less healthy life styles. Small Steps to Health and Wealth is a program implemented to try to teach strategies to overcome money troubles and improve health.
The Small Steps to Health and Wealth program was adopted by UK Cooperative Extension Service form Rutgers University. It allows participants to track the good choices they make related to nutrition, physical activity and managing money. UK Cooperative Extension Service has offered an online challenge as part of the program. This free, online program allows participants to input data, see their daily point totals in each of 10 categories, and view a bar graph comparing their progress to other participants. Small Steps to Health and Wealth focuses on remedying the problems with technical medical jargon that create confusion among consumers.
A special 6-week challenge was held in spring 2012 in 8 counties in Central Kentucky. Approximately 38 people participated. Nine members of the group reported losing 60 pounds, collectively. Over half of those who responded reported that they had saved $50 or more while participating in the program. Many participants said that being able to track their daily progress and activity was the best feature of the program. Of the participants that responded, 100% said they planned to continue one or more behaviors that they learned during the program.