September Wellness Focus: Fruits & Veggies, Yoga, Health Aging & More

Plan your September wellness focus with our compilation of links, tools and resources to bolster your employee health & wellness communications.

Fruits & Veggies: More Matters Month
Here’s the bad news: Fewer than 1 in 4 adults eat the recommended amount of fruits every day.
Fewer than 1 in 7 adults eat the recommended amount of vegetables every day. Here’s the good news: Eating a healthy diet with plenty of vegetables and fruits can help you lower your risk for heart disease and some types of cancer, maintain or reach a healthy weight and keep your body strong and active. Helathfinder.gov offers a full toolkit for Fruits & Veggies – September is More Matters Month. Get facts, announcements, tweets, e-cards and more resources to use in your employee communications

National Yoga Month
Yoga is a terrific mind/body wellness discipline that has many benefits from stress reduction and relaxation to strengthening bones, joints, balance and flexibility. If you’ve ever thought about taking up yoga, now’s the time because September is National Yoga Month. To celebrate, you can get one week of free yoga at more than 1600 studios nationwide.

Healthy Aging Month
There are over 76 million baby boomers today over 50 and the first of the 82.1 million generation X-ers are about to reach that milestone in 2015. Healthy Aging Month is an annual observance focusing national attention on the positive aspects of growing older. The mission of Healthy Aging Month is to encourage local events that promote personal responsibility for one’s health… be it physically, socially, mentally or financially. Check out 10 Tips for Reinventing Yourself during Healthy Aging Month.

National Recovery Month
Every September, SAMHSA sponsors Recovery Month to increase awareness and understanding of mental and substance use disorders and celebrate the people who recover. SAMHSA offers a comprehensive toolkit (PDF) in English and Spanish, along with tools, graphics and other recovery promotional resources.

National Food Safety Month
This annual focus was designed to heighten the awareness of food safety education. Each year features a new theme and free training materials for the restaurant and foodservice industry to help reinforce proper food safety practices and procedures. This year’s Food Safety theme is “Notorious Virus”!

National Preparedness Month
September is recognized as National Preparedness Month, offering a reminder that we all must take action to prepare for the types of emergencies and weather-related disasters that could affect us where we live, work, and also where we visit: floods, hurricanes, extreme heat, earthquakes and more. Learn how to prepare before during and after emergencies. Get communication tools, themes, graphics, logos, emojis and more in English and other languages.

More September health & wellness observances