Building Better Bodies

IN this factory town in south-central Michigan, hard hit by the decline of the auto industry and home to a population whose health grimly lags well below national averages, several dozen small-business owners have joined forces in a wellness campaign that rivals those of the country’s giant corporations.

With fewer employees to rely on, small businesses are particularly vulnerable when workers take sick days or function poorly on the job.

“If they’re not healthy and alert, they can’t do things like designing projects,” said Mike Shirkey, owner of Orbitform Group, a machine tools company with 55 employees in Jackson.

Mr. Shirkey compares the wellness program with the “measure and improve” approach that he applies to manufacturing. Two years ago, Mr. Shirkey helped persuade other business owners in Jackson to join a CEO Roundtable, a forum and self-help group for top executives that is trying to address employees’ health as a crucial part of corporate strategy, rather than as simply a cost-management problem.

Kirk Mercer, president of R. W. Mercer, a Jackson-based contractor that builds small factories, doctors’ offices and other commercial buildings in the Midwest, said he was so taken with this approach that he was urging his small subcontractors, each with a handful of employees, to join the wellness roundtable.

There, businesspeople share ideas and encourage one another, but each business makes its own health-care decisions and pays for whatever coverage it provides; there is no pooling of employees for insurance purposes or to achieve other economies of scale, and no government contribution to the program.

If the strategy works, the result will probably be healthier workers and lower medical costs, and that will be striking, when many small businesses are unable to provide any health coverage at all — and one in seven Americans is uninsured. At least half of them work for small companies or are self-employed.

Promoting wellness is especially urgent in Jackson, whose residents have more health problems than people living elsewhere, according to a recent survey paid for by the Allegiance Health system, which operates the local hospital; the county health department; and other local agencies.

In Jackson County, 70 percent of adults are overweight or obese, compared with 63 percent nationally, well above the 9 percent national rate. More than 1 in 4 is a smoker, compared with 1 in 10 nationally. Many people in the county do not realize they are taking serious chances with their health, the survey found; they do not have insurance and cannot afford health services.

Jackson’s economic health is shaky as well. As the city’s population has declined slowly to about 34,000, median household income has fallen to $31,000, a third less than Michigan as a whole, and the countywide (metropolitan area) unemployment rate has climbed to 9.7 percent, compared with 9.1 percent statewide in July.