Gearing Up

Completing a Health Risk Assessment

         Completing a Health Risk Assessment is the first step to a healthier lifestyle.       
Below are directions on completing the HRA and answers to FAQs.

What is a Health Risk Assessment (HRA)?

The Health Risk Assessment, or HRA, is a health questionnaire that asks a variety of questions about your lifestyle habits such as physical activity level, eating habits, and stress, in addition to biometric measures such as cholesterol and blood pressure. The HRA combines your answers from both lifestyle questions and biometric measures to give you a Personal Health Report.  This Personal Health Report gives you an overall health score (ranging from High Risk to Excellent), as well as a health risk status for each category covered in the HRA.  In addition, the HRA gives action steps to help you improve your score for any given health category.  It is important to note that the HRA is not a replacement for the advice of Health Care Professionals.  We advise you to share your Personal Health Report with your Health Care Provider.

Who Can Complete an HRA?

The HRA is offered to the community, and employees at all UTMB locations.

Who Developed the UTMB HRA? 

The HRA used by the Health Promotion/Training for Life Program is an online version developed by Healics, Inc.  Healics, Inc. has been in the Preventive Health Care business for over 10 years, helping a variety of corporations and businesses work to better understand the health needs of their employees. Healics, Inc. is a third party vendor and will conduct all aggregate data analysis.  The health guidelines used by Healics, Inc. come from over 10 years of their own analysis of health risk and health care costs data, and are in accordance with the National Institutes of Health.  The aggregate data is analyzed to better understand the health risks of our employees and community, and better serve the UTMB community with health promotion services and programs. 

Why does the HRA ask questions about employee status, job category, and health insurance?

The reason these questions are asked is to identify employees verses individuals in the community, to understand if there are different health risks for different job types, and to review how satisfied employees are with their health insurance..

What if I don’t know my Cholesterol or Body Fat %, etc.?

Only enter in Biometric Information that you know to be true, do not guess.  If you do not know any/all scores such as cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure, leave the section blank.  if you have scores that were taken within the last year and there have been no significant changes in your health or lifestyle, enter those scores.  if you would like to have biometric measures completed, we suggest you set up an appointment with your physician.

What if I cannot complete all of the HRA at one time?

It takes approximately 5-12 minutes to complete the HRA. Once started, you have up to one month to complete or make additions (such as blood work information) to your HRA.  After that time has expired, you will no longer be able to make any changes.  This is done so you can have an accurate "baseline" on your health risk.  Approximately one year after you have completed your initial assessment, you will receive an e-mail reminder to complete the HRA again.  You will then be able to compare your baseline health assessment with your one-year follow-up health assessment.

Can I access this website from my home computer? 

Yes.  Go to the website listed below from whatever search engine you use from your home computer.