Bomaid and BIHL Trust: Powering The Fit For Life Campaign

Bomaid and BIHL Trust:

Powering the Fit for Life Campaign

The epidemic of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) is an increasing concern and poses devastating health consequences for Batswana and the world over. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is estimated that Non-Communicable Diseases are the cause of 46% of deaths in Botswana. This is mainly due to harmful and excessive use of alcohol and tobacco, unhealthy diet as well as inadequate physical activity. Considering this, Botswana Medical Aid (Bomaid) and the Botswana Insurance Holding Limited (BIHL) Trust have collaborated in efforts to create awareness through a National response to Non- Communicable Diseases (NCDs). This alliance has birthed a fitness programme called Fit for Life Campaign which started on the 1st of June and is currently at its peak. This campaign is geared towards promoting and encouraging a healthy lifestyle and wellness amongst Batswana by highlighting the importance of keeping healthy, especially for those living with NCDs, which are now the leading cause of death globally and claiming millions of lives each year. This combined effort is also purposed towards performing surveillance, monitoring, and research to better understand the burden of NCDs as well as seek innovative solutions that evaluate the actual impact of interventions.

The reasons for the increase in health challenges associated with non-communicable health challenges include rapid urbanisation, reduced exercise, poor diet, and a sedentary lifestyle, among other factors. Overall, this impact on people can lead to chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and diabetes. Additionally, NCDs, can lead to reduced life expectancy and can cause affected people to also experience increased medical bills and less favorable life insurance policy assessments. In this vein, two of Botswana’s big players in the Life and Wellness space, Botswana Medical Aid Society (Bomaid) and the BIHL Trust have partnered on a public education campaign aimed at combating lifestyle diseases.

A better quality of life is possible and indeed achievable through steady changes that can result in an improved overall health and wellness profile. Therefore, as a Nation, we have a growing need to focus on well-being, and wellness. This need has never been as great as it is today. The efforts of Bomaid and BIHL Trust have birthed an initiative called Fit for Life. The initiative features nine individuals selected through an open call who will undergo a 90-day transformation. The campaign will set into motion habit changes in their current lifestyle, that will enable them to lead a healthier and

happier lives. The primary aim of the campaign, and one which is of benefit to all, is to be healthy, happier, and more holistically “well” people across societies. Their journeys will continue to be profiled on social media to educate the public on NCDs and ways of curbing them. Through the profiling of the team’s various activities and habit changes, the public will have exposure to the transformation as it happens. BIHL Trust Chair, Ngwatshi Enyatseng added, “Our philosophy as the wider BIHL Group focuses on realizing the advantages of strength in numbers, both literally and figuratively. We are stronger together, and this applies to our wellbeing, a central focus area for us as a business. The Fit for Life initiative, in conjunction with Bomaid, gives us an exciting opportunity to demonstrate how our many experts, partners, and ideas can come together to help Batswana live a healthier lifestyle and defeat NCDs. Through this initiative, we aim to help Batswana to holistically improve their health, wellness, productivity and ultimately their quality of life and to ultimately engineer stronger legacies for and with each other.”

The Fit-for-Life team’s journey will be shared on social media to inspire and educate the wider public on how they too can overcome NCDs while changing their lifestyle for the better. Viewers will be able to enjoy the Fit for Life journey through content featuring delicious recipes and exercise programmes that can all be tried at home. The nine-member Fit-for-Life team will undergo thorough health and lifestyle assessments. The data gathered from the initial assessments will then be evaluated by life insurance experts and a subsidiary of the BIHL Group, Botswana Life, to yield a score. That score will become the baseline that the Fit-for-Life team will endeavor to improve on after the 90-days of actively

changing their lifestyles. The team will be under the guidance of a team of experts in fitness, nutrition, health, and wellness. This team of experts will journey with the participants and will support the Fitfor-Life participants on their journey. The panel of wellness experts will include a nutritionist, a mental wellness practitioner, a fitness trainer, and a chef and they will take the team through initiatives that are geared towards sustainably improving their lifestyles based on their individual assessments.

Weekly sessions with the Fit for Life team feature progress reports from the experts guiding the team to help viewers appreciate the realities of changing your lifestyle for the better. The team also gets to share their personal views on their journey to their final assessment where, hopefully, improvements in their lifestyle profile will yield a more favorable life policy assessment. Through all these efforts a social media food content producer will help bring the food and nutrition recommendations to life by cooking and presenting some of the healthy recipes to be shared via social media for the benefit of both the participants and the public. Bomaid’s Business Development Manager concluded by saying, “Bomaid and BIHL Group through its CSR arm BIHL Trust have an exciting partnership to bring greater awareness to the rising pandemic of NCDs. These are lifestyle diseases that are preventable from a health and wellness perspective. We aim to empower Batswana through the Fit-for-Life initiative with practical knowledge that can be easily adopted into their everyday lives. The aim is to give Batswana the tools to actively achieve a happier and healthier lifestyle.”

With the understanding that NCDs continue to challenge us as a nation, the two businesses saw a need to educate the public in a way that is authentic, engaging, and informative. All efforts created in this campaign are meant to encourage more Batswana to live healthier lifestyles. A healthy lifestyle is essential for anyone who wants to feel their best and stay healthy as they age. However, we are bombarded with so much information every day that it can be difficult to determine what is best for our health, and preventative healthcare can be a confusing topic. Different messages about wellbeing are conveyed and determining which advice to follow can be difficult. However, leading a healthy lifestyle does not have to be difficult. By developing this easy-to-follow-along initiative, the two businesses hope to create a movement that will see Batswana into a new era of holistic and healthy living. At the end of this campaign, it is the hope that more Batswana will follow along in gearing towards being Fit for Life.