Lamar Institute

Program Overview

Take a minute to understand the purpose and approach of our program

Who we are looking to help

Those most impacted by diseases and comorbidities.  To determine this, we look to the World Health Organization's (WHO) definition of the social determinants of health ("SDOH").  The reason we are looking here is this is the WHO's recommendation for how to make real change in the lives who need the most health and wellness assistance.  The WHO's SDOH include:
1. Race
2. Age
3. Sex
4. Gender
5. Class
​6. Education

How we are looking to help

Our intervention model moves participants along the transtheoretical model of behavior change.  We do this by helping participants develop the tools they did to control and live healthier lifestyles.  This occurs through self-efficacy, which is the believe in one's ability to accomplish a goal.  The single common ingredients in individuals who have been successful on their health journeys are good goals, support, and the tools needed to succeed.

1. Goals

Our intervention includes the following steps for goal-setting: (1) assessment, (2) education, (3) evaluation, and (4) SMART goal setting.  The assessment is a week-long assessment that monitors the dietary, nutritious, physical activity, motivation, and stress habits of the week.  Participants are then educated on the desired benchmarks for each of these areas.  Participants are then encouraged to assess the gap of where they are compared to where they want to be.  The last step of this phase is to walk the participant through SMART goal-setting exercise that has the client develop SMART goals that closing the gap between where the participant is and where they want to be.

2. Support

Our intervention consists of three levels of support: (1) coaching support during group chats and check-ins, (2) each participant is assigned a support partner, and (3) the group will develop group goals then check-in on a weekly basis on the group goals.  The only direct interaction you will have to the program facilitators is through email and in group Zoom meetings.  This is the time for you to share, be honest, get support, and understand we operate in a continuous judgement-free zone and that you are not alone in your health and wellness journey.  Additionally, each person will be assigned a support partner.  The support partners will get together and develop their own plan for supporting each other (e.g. number of check-ins per week, method of checking in, etc.).  The partners will also participate in goal competitions against the other partners in the group for fun prizes.  Finally, The group goals will combine the individual goals of the group participants in a way that allow the group to track, this includes finishing the entire program as a group.

3. Tools

Participants will be provided all of the resources they need to success, including: (1) fitness trackers, (2) smart apps, (3) exercise program, (4) diet and nutrition information and resources, (5) wellness education module, and (6) wellness tips.  The information will be available to the public through our website and social media.

What our expectations from our participants are

  1. Be honest about your limitations;

  2. Work at your pace and no one else's;

  3. Seek a deeper reason for why you are pursuing wellness, aside from the body you will come to love;

  4. Sign and abide by the Program Agreement;

  5. Sign and abide by the Support Partnership Agreement; and

  6. Once you develop the wellness you are looking for, pay it forward as a group leader.

Personal health requires systemic solutions and effective public policy matched with personal changes and wellness.

2008 World Health Organization Recommendations for Addressing Social Determinants of Health

We use the 2008 World Health Organization recommendations to guide our approach to addressing the social determinants of health.​ The recommendations consist of (1) improving conditions of daily life, (2) tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources, and (3) measure the problem, evaluate action, expand the knowledge base, develop a workforce that is trained in the social determinants of health, and raise public awareness.

Improve Conditions of Daily Life

  1. Commit to and implement a comprehensive approach to early life, building on existing child survival [programs] and extending interventions in early life to include social/emotional and language/cognitive development.

  2. Expand the provision and scope of education to include the principles of early child development (physical, social/emotional, and language/cognitive development).

  3. Place health and health equity at the heart of urban governance and planning.

  4. Promote health equity between rural and urban areas through sustained investment in rural, development, addressing the exclusionary policies and processes that lead to rural poverty, landlessness, and displacement of people from their homes.

  5. Ensure that economic and social policy responses to climate change and other environmental degradation take into account health equity.

  6. Make full and fair employment and decent work a central goal of national and international social and economic policy-making.

  7. Achieving health equity requires safe, secure, and fairly paid work, year-round work opportunities, and healthy work-life balance for all.

  8. Improve the working conditions for all workers to reduce their exposure to material hazards, work-related stress, and health-damaging [behaviors].

  9. Establish and strengthen universal comprehensive social protection policies that support a level of income sufficient for healthy living for all.

  10. Build health-care systems based on principles of equity, disease prevention, and health promotion.

  11. Build and strengthen the health workforce, and expand capabilities to act on the social determinants of health (WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health; World Health Organization, 2008, pgs. 3-9).

Tackle the Inequitable Distribution of Power, Money, and Resources

  1. Place responsibility for action on health and health equity at the top level of government and ensure its coherent consideration across all policies.

  2. Adopt a social determinants framework across the policy and programmatic functions of the ministry of health and strengthen its stewardship role in supporting a social determinants approach across government.

  3. Strengthen public finance for action on the social determinants of health.

  4. Increase international finance for health equity, and coordinate increased finance through a social determinants of health action framework.

  5. Fairly allocate government resources for action on the social determinants of health.

  6. Institutionalize consideration of health and health equity impact in national and international economic agreements and policy-making.

  7. Reinforce the primary role of the state in the provision of basic services essential to health (such as water/sanitation) and the regulation of goods and services with a major impact on health (such as tobacco, alcohol, and food).

  8. Address gender biases in the structures of society – in laws and their enforcement, in the way organizations are run and intervention designed, and the way in which a country’s economic performance is measured.

  9. Develop and finance policies and [programs] that close gaps in education and skills, and that support female economic participation.

  10. Increase investment in sexual and reproductive health services and [programs], building to universal coverage and rights.

  11. Empower all groups in society through fair representation in decision-making about how society operates, particularly in relation to its effect on health equity, and create and maintain a socially inclusive framework for policy-making.

  12. Enable civil society to organize and act in a manner that promotes and realizes the political and social rights affective health equity.

  13. Make health equity a global development goal, and adopt a social determinants of health framework to strengthen multilateral action on development.

  14. Strengthen WHO leadership in global action on the social determinants of health, institutionalizing social determinants of health as a guiding principle across WHO departments and country [programs] (WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health; World Health Organization, 2008, pgs. 10-19).

Measure the Problem, Evaluate Action, Expand the Knowledge Base, Develop a Workforce that is Trained in the Social Determinants of Health, and Raise Public Awareness

  1. Ensure that routine monitoring systems for health equity and the social determinants of health are in place, locally, nationally, and internationally.

  2. Invest in generating and sharing new evidence on the ways in which social determinants influence population health and health equity and on the effectiveness of measures to reduce health inequities through action on social determinants.

  3. Provide training on the social determinants of health to policy actors, stakeholders, and practitioners and invest in raising public awareness (WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health; World Health Organization, 2008, pg. 21).