NEW YORK—Raising consciousness is key to helping benefit plan members adopt healthy lifestyles, which is a major challenge for employers, a panel of leading benefit managers said.

Speaking during the 2010 Benefit Manager of the Year Forum in New York last month, the panelists discussed challenges facing their organizations and offered solutions.

The forum is a new annual event hosted by Business Insurance to help benefit professionals network with peers and share ideas to solve benefit-related problems. More than 70 people attended the forum, which also featured a luncheon at which BI presented the Benefit Manager of the Year award and inducted two members into the inaugural Benefit Management Honor Roll (BI, June 28).

One of the health initiatives at Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp. that has won “very good engagement” with employees is a Healthy Living Rebates program, which offers reimbursements to enrollees for making healthier lifestyle choices, said Marianne McManus, director of health benefits strategy and design in Somers, N.Y.

Combating childhood obesity is important to IBM and the rebate program has begun to address that problem, said Ms. McManus, the 2010 Benefit Manager of the Year. “The Healthy Living Rebates program recognizes the family as an entity that needs to model healthy behaviors, especially to attack childhood obesity,” she said.

Elements of IBM's program promote family-centered activities, from eating meals together to taking walks or engaging in other exercises.

IBM plan members have access to a health management center portal, developed by IBM with outside partners including WebMD, that enables users to research health conditions, sign up for health care alerts and reminders to obtain screenings, and track their progress toward achieving rebates, she explained.

“Ultimately, what we're trying to do is manage risk,” Ms. McManus said. “Improve people's health and you will improve lives and costs.”

The city of Knoxville, Tenn., has used financial incentives to help its benefit plan members with chronic diseases embrace better managing their conditions, but the city's risk and benefit manager, Gary Eastes, said he would like to shift members toward habits that make such incentives unnecessary.

“I don't want to keep incentives for chronic disease self-care. Most employees realize that their premiums go up if somebody isn't doing something about their health,” said Mr. Eastes, a member of the 2010 Benefit Management Honor Roll.

“We're taking steps toward a goal I don't think we'll ever totally reach,” he said. “That's getting employees to understand they have to take control of their own health.”

A particular challenge for the government entity was communicating that “health care premiums are all our money. It's never been true that premiums are just an insurance company's money,” he said.

One necessary change in the health care system, he said, is educating doctors that they need to change how they manage patients' health. “Changing a lifestyle is a huge leap for doctors,” Mr. Eastes said. “The medical community has done a tremendous job of keeping unhealthy people alive longer, but it has been terrible at keeping us healthy. Health care reform has to boil down to keeping people healthy.”

An employer's culture “supports or undermines choices” that employees make, said Joseph Molloy, corporate director of benefits at North Shore-LIJ Health System in Lake Success, N.Y. Mr. Molloy, a member of the 2010 Benefit Management Honor Roll, suggested that “workplaces need to support managers in promoting wellness and in employees adopting wellness lifestyles.”

Four lifestyle choices promote chronic disease, he said: lack of exercise, smoking, poor food choices and uncontrolled stress.