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MEET THE MAYOR...

Meet the Mayor


Mayor Bill White formed the Mayor's Wellness Council after Men's Fitness magazine listed Houston as the "Fattest City in America."

William Baun  
William Boyd Baun, EPD, FAWHP
 

William B. Baun has more than 28 years experience in worksite health promotion management/programming and directs the Wellness program at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.  He worked as a health & productivity consultant and provided strategic and evaluation services for many large and small companies between 1996 - 1999.  He was a member of the startup wellness team at Tenneco (1981) and managed the program till 1996.  While at Tenneco he planned and initiated more than 25 health promotion/fitness programs in a variety of white and blue-collar settings.   In the early 90's he teamed up with Dr. Nell Gottlieb, University of Texas at Austin, to develop a remote site health promotion model.  This model was used by Tenneco to implement the Pipeline to Health program at 110 gas compressor sites and by the American Cancer Society’s Worksite Team to implement more than 1,500 health promotion programs in Texas.

While under William’s leadership, the Tenneco program received national recognition.  In 1984, the Association of Fitness in Business (AFB) honored the program as the Best Corporate Program and the Washington Business Group on Health honored them with the Worksite Wellness Award.  In 1985 Tenneco was on the Club Industry Top Ten Programs list, and received the Kelly Communications Health Action Leadership Award in 1990.  In 1992 Tenneco was one of the first worksite programs to receive the C. Everett Koop Health Project Award, and in 1995 Tenneco was recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the Healthiest Companies in America.  In February 1996 the American Productivity & Quality Center completed a health promotion bench marking study and recognized Tenneco for its program adaptability and success in remote site programming.

William received the AWHP Exceptional Leadership Award in 1988, Regional AWHP Leadership Award 1996, is a Fellow of both AWHP and the AAHPERD Research Consortium, and was certified by ACSM at the Health/Fitness Director level in 1986.  He has a B.S. in Economics/Government from Louisiana State University, a Master's degree from the University of North Texas in Exercise Science, and doctoral work in Human Organizational Systems from the Fielding Institute. William has many publications and book chapters concerned with the core principles and issues involved in managing worksite programs.  He co-authored many of the classic economic worksite studies that came from Tenneco.  His first book, Top Priority - The Worksite Health Promotion Team  (1988) was published with the American Cancer Society and University of Texas Public Health School.  His next book, Guidelines for Employee Health Promotion Programs was published in 1992 and in 1995 he completed a book entitled Health Promotion Management Skills for the AJHP.  In 1999 he published Health Promotion Sourcebook for Small Business with WELCOA and his latest work, ACSM’s Worksite Health Promotion Manual was published by Human Kinetics in 2003. He serves as an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Health Promotion and is on the Editorial Board of ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal.

He has held adjunct professor positions at both the University of Texas Public Health School and the University of Houston where he has taught and served on thesis and dissertation committees.  William has served as a member of the Board of Directors for the National Wellness Institute since 1996.  He is an enthusiastic and motivating workshop leader, keynote, and after a dinner speaker.   Twice he has addressed groups reviewing worksite health issues chaired by the Surgeon General of the United States.  His strong facilitation skills have been used in a variety of environments to help plan and move projects forward.   He has planned and managed operational  (>$1m), capital (>$1m), cost of quality ($600k), and benefit (>$19m) budgets for departments and projects in a variety of settings.  He is dedicated to total quality management and teamwork and has facilitated, developed, managed, and evaluated the cross-functional work involved in these processes.