Walt Disney Parks & Resorts chief medical officer receives wellness award

A national leader in corporate health and wellness has recently been awarded the 2011 Global Leadership in Corporate Health Award.

Pamela Hymel, chief medical officer at Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, was recognized for her work as a proponent of the corporate health and wellness movement affecting businesses all over the world.

Sponsored by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and the National Business Group on Health, the award honors those who produce results by demonstrating leadership and excellence in creating programs that effectively engage the nation’s workforce into quitting smoking, undergoing regular health check-ups and encouraging productivity on the job.

“Pam Hymel consistently advances new ideas about health and productivity and has been successful in creating a ‘culture of health’ in the workplace,” said Warner Hudson, president of ACOEM. “She is a true leader whose dedication has helped create healthier workplaces and benefited both employees and employers.”

Hymel has been heralded as a national leader and expert in implementing successful wellness programs and has demonstrated her value not only at Walt Disney Parks & Resorts but also at other companies including Cisco Systems and Hughes Electronics.

Her time at Walt Disney Parks & Resorts includes creating an effective wellness strategy for employees of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Vacation Clubs and Disney Cruise Lines.

“Dr. Pam Hymel is a widely admired leader, mentor and visionary in occupational medicine, safety and health improvement programs in the United States,” said Helen Darling, president and CEO of the National Business Group on Health. “She has successfully created comprehensive state-of-the-art health programs and demonstrated over and over that she is not only a rare thought leader and premier researcher, but also an effective administrator.”

Hymel’s experience and success in the area would be well-received in Canada, where the recently-released 2011 Buffet National Wellness survey found that although the nation’s employers realize the importance of creating a successful wellness program, many do not have the infrastructure in place to properly do so.

The survey found that 51 percent of employers cite a lack of budget in their failure to successfully implement a workplace wellness program with 36 percent citing lack of staffing.