Bridge of Health Partnerchain 2011

Welcome to the Bridge of Health PartnerChain, the first large-scale health awareness campaign in Hungary joined to date by more than 100,000 employees of 18 companies. This year again the campaign is patronized by Katalin Makray, wife of Pál Schmitt, the President of the Hungarian Republic.

International surveys show that people living in the developed world bear half of the responsibility for their own health, especially through their way of living. Diseases impose burdens not only on the individual and the family but also on the society at large: in Hungary cancer alone causes a GDP loss amounting to 350 billion forints not counting the costs of drup price donation and inpatient care. This is one of the reasons why we want to provide as much as possible useful information in this field.

By visiting our website you can gather medical information on breast cancer, and also on cervical and prostate cancer, two other frequently occurring types of cancer that are highly screenable and curable. Information on the possible treatments and ways to reduce risks are also provided along with some relevant data. You can also read tips to help you to stop smoking, to eat healthy foods, and to manage stress successfully; or you can locate the closest screening station to your place of residence. In addition, personalized consultancy is provided by our medical experts, whom you can contact by posting your questions on the message board. We hope that this year again many of you will complete our health quiz to win valuable prizes by giving proper answers to the questions. Winners will have the opportunity to meet the brand ambassadors and celebrity supporters of the campaign at an exclusive reception to be organized at the end of November 2011.

This year's campaign is designed to be more interactive in order to engage a larger number of employees and not only in the health quiz. We will invite the participants to join challenges related to the five pillars of health to make the upcoming 2 months more colorful. We added a new games, contests, activities, and other extras to the campaign so make sure that you check back regularly for updates and read our newsletters.

The Bridge of Health PartnerChain initiative was launched by the Bridge of Health Alliance in 2009, building on the idea of a successful internal employee campaign implemented by GE Hungary, the key sponsor of the Alliance in 2006.The aim of the internal communications campaign involving all employees of the companies that take part in the initiative is to encourage women to attend the country-wide breast cancer screening programs organized by the Hungarian Health Authority, and to raise awareness of the importance of leading a healthy life as a way to prevent the disease.The program is a great way to deliver the message to employees and thereby to their families, because it is everyone’s common interest to lead a healthy life and thus minimize the risk of diseases.

The Alliance works in a unique and efficient way as it creates hundreds of thousands of USD in public value with very low financial investment even in the Central and Eastern European region. It is the result of a complex process that has an impact on individuals, businesses, and the society as a whole, since an employee, who is out of work due to illness, creates losses for the individual, for his/her family, for the employer as it needs to find a substitute for the employee, and also for the healthcare system. Similarly, early disease detection has an impact on all levels: treatment of a breast cancer detected at the last stage might incur ten to twenty times higher costs for the individual, for her family and for the healthcare system as compared to the one detected at an early stage, not to mention that the treatment is more successful and the chances to survive are far better.

With that said, we encourage every company manager and human resources leader to have their companies join this unique initiative that will bring Hungary closer to the European standards of a health-conscious corporate mindset.

We hope that you will find our campaign useful and will continue to cooperate with us!