August 18, 2025

Andy Hill CARE Fund helps expand Connect to Wellness™ in Washington

HPRC Director Dr. Peggy Hannon and her team have received a grant from the Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment Fund (“Andy Hill”) to make Connect to Wellness™, an evidence-based employee wellness program, available to small businesses across Washington State. Andy Hill invests in public and private entities to promote cancer research in Washington. Through research grants and strategic co-funding partnerships, Andy Hill aims to improve health outcomes by advancing transformational research in the prevention and treatment of cancer.

The goal of Connect to Wellness™ is to serve employees in low-wage industries who have little or no access to evidence-based wellness policies and programs at work. The purpose of the Andy Hill funding is to disseminate Connect to Wellness™ in Washington state through partnering with Washington employers in small, low-wage industries to implement evidence-based interventions (EBIs) for cancer screening, healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco cessation, and stress management. Connect to Wellness™ supports small business owners and human resources managers, who usually have limited time and resources for wellness programs through consultation with a trained coach and toolkits for each EBI. Dr. Hannon and her team are working with CoMotion, the UW’s commercialization and technology transfer center, to plan the launch.

Connect to Wellness™ will be marketed to small businesses (<250 employees) in the healthcare and social services and other services industries. The research team will also create an adapted version of Connect to Wellness™ to meet the needs of the accommodation and food services industry, a difficult to reach industry sector employing millions of people. The research team will make adaptations in partnership with a design workgroup that includes employees and employers working in the accommodation and food services industry. The team will then pilot-test the adapted program with 20 businesses and examine EBI implementation (worksite level) and employee (individual level) behavior change at baseline and 6-months.

“Our team has known for a long time that Connect to Wellness™ effectively helps those employees who most need and want health support, and that it helps them fast. We’ve been hoping for the opportunity to further disseminate the program, and now we have the funding to do it. We are so grateful to both the Andy Hill CARE Fund and our wonderful partners at CoMotion, especially Adam Krynicki and Ryan Buckmaster, for making this all possible.”

Kristen Hammerback

Project Lead: Peggy Hannon

Project Core Team: Kristen Hammerback & Michelle Strait