myHR: November 16, 2022

Child Care Plans for the Winter Season

The winter season means potential school closures are ahead. Finding dependent care can be a challenge when your children  have a snow day, but you are scheduled to work on campus or online. Penn has childcare resources to help you meet your family’s needs and the demands of your job.

Penn’s Snow Day Child Care Program provides all-day childcare for benefits-eligible faculty and staff when inclement weather closes schools in the Philadelphia school district, but the University of Pennsylvania remains open. Children ages 12 weeks to 12 years are eligible for the program, whether they attend a Philadelphia district school or not.

Snow Day Child Care, offered in partnership with the Penn Children’s Center, is available between December 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023, weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Space is limited daily and care requests are met on a first-come, first-served basis. Drop-in care through this program is highly subsidized. The cost for eligible employees is $15 per day, per child.  Pre-registration is required through the Penn Children’s Center website.  

If you have childcare needs outside of snow days, the Penn Children’s Center is still a great option. The center is an accredited early education and childcare facility that offers flexible options for individuals with needs ranging from two to five days of care. Immediate openings are available in the preschool program for children ages 3 to 5.  

Additionally, since schoolroom capacity has returned to normal, the Center is accepting waitlist reservations for the Infant, Younger Toddler, and Older Toddler programs for children ages 3 to 36 months. Penn Children’s Center also offers drop-in care, which is available as space permits and welcomes all members of the University and surrounding communities.  For more information or to request a tour of the center, email Business Manager Tamara Alizzi.

For more information about work-life benefits, visit the Wellness & Work-Life webpage. 

Final Week for Fall Biometric Screenings 

This is the final week of on-campus biometric screenings offered as part of Penn’s annual Be in the Know faculty and staff wellness campaign. There are only two more screening sessions available:

Thursday, November 17, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. 

Penn Medicine, Biomedical Research Building, 421 Curie Boulevard

Tuesday, November 22, 9 a.m.-2 p.m.

Facilities and Real Estate, Left Bank Conference Room, 3101 Walnut Street

Sign up for your appointment online at the Health Advocate website. Select Schedule a Health Screening, then Schedule to choose an appointment time. A limited number of walk-in screenings are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Be in the Know 2022-2023 wellness campaign, open to all benefits-eligible faculty and staff, is your opportunity to focus on your health, connect with the Penn community, and earn rewards of up to $300.*

Rewards Start with Your Biometric Screening

Biometric screenings are the first step towards earning rewards in Be in the Know 2022-2023 Steps for Success program and the only activity required to receive Pulse Cash rewards this year.

Once you complete your biometric screening, you earn $50 in Pulse Cash rewards, plus qualify to earn an additional $250 in rewards by completing your choice of qualifying “Ways to Earn” activities. Redeem your earned Pulse Cash rewards on the Virgin Pulse platform to buy gift cards, shop their Rewards Store, or make charitable donations.

What You’ll Learn at the Biometric Screening

Quick, convenient, and confidential biometric screenings show you key indicators about your health. Your privacy is strictly protected. Penn will never know your individual screening results, health assessment answers, or personal health goals.

At the on-campus biometric screening, a Health Advocate educator will measure your:

• Blood pressure
• Total cholesterol
• HDL cholesterol
• Blood sugar/glucose

After your on-campus screening, you will automatically receive Be in the Know credit. Please allow approximately two weeks for credit and rewards to appear on the Virgin Pulse platform.

For complete details about Be in the Know, visit www.hr.upenn.edu/beintheknow.

*Per IRS guidelines, all Be in the Know rewards are subject to applicable payroll taxes at the time they are earned and rewarded to participants - even if rewards have not yet been redeemed (i.e., spent). 

November is National Caregivers Month

Caregivers can often take on many roles as they look out for their loved ones. Family caregivers may be of any age -- from youth to grandparents. They may provide care in their homes or long distance. Regardless of where caregivers live or what caregiving looks like for them, it is important to let them know they are appreciated. There is not one singular role played by a caregiver. They may become a friend, a confidant, a nurse, and most importantly: a beacon of hope for those they care for.

This is a heavy responsibility to hold, and caregiving is not easy task. That’s why Penn offers resources to help you find the support you need. Consider these no-cost options during National Family Caregivers Month and beyond:

• Monthly Wellness Walk – Alzheimer’s Awareness, November 30, meet at 12 p.m.
  • Meet the team at 12 p.m. on Locust Walk, by College Hall and the Ben Franklin statue. The Healthy Penn Partnership will lead you on a two-mile walk on/near campus to help you increase physical activity and steps, plus build community with participating Penn staff and faculty. Be sure to wear sneakers or comfortable shoes, bring water, and invite a colleague to join. For November, please join us to support Alzheimer's disease awareness by wearing purple. Register for Monthly Wellness Walk – Alzheimer’s Awareness.
• Developing a Journaling Practice for Calm and Self-Care, December 6, 12 p.m.-1 p.m.
  • This 60-minute online class will allow you time and space to learn about creating an intentional journaling practice for calm and self-care. Learn how to pause and reflect intentionally for centering yourself. Learn journal prompts to free intuition and deeper clarity. The process supports confidence, courage, self-awareness, healing, and self-acceptance. Register for Developing a Journaling Practice for Calm and Self-Care.
• Caregiving with Mindfulness, December 8, 12 p.m.-1 p.m.
  • At work and at home, we seem to spend much of our time caring for others. A mindfulness-based approach can help us to make a genuine connection while maintaining our own balance. This virtual workshop will explore the ways that mindfulness can support heartfelt caring for others while taking care of ourselves at the same time. Register for Caregiving with Mindfulness.

Penn also offers the following support resources to help meet your caregiving needs for visitors at Penn Medicine:

• Family Caregiver Center: The Family Caregiver Center is a space for families and caregivers to relax and unwind during a loved one’s hospital stay.
• Spiritual Care and Chaplain Services: At Hospital of University of Pennsylvania, we recognize that spiritual needs may arise during times of illness. We honor the diverse spiritual and cultural needs of our patients, visitors and employees. A part of the healthcare team, our chaplains are professionally trained to offer emotional and spiritual support to patients and families from all walks of life.
• Geriatric Medicine: Penn Medicine understands the special needs of the aging population and our geriatric medicine physicians provide personal attention and convenience to this growing segment of the community. Services and programs offered include: Acute Care for Elders Unit, House Calls Program, Penn Memory Center, Sleep Conditions for Seniors, and Treatment Team.

Other Resources

• VA Benefits for Caregivers
• The Family Caregiver Alliance
• The National Administration on Aging
• Through Penn’s partnership with Care.com benefits-eligible faculty and staff can also access a variety of senior care services. 

For more caregiving tips, visit the Caregiver Action Network website. You can also visit the Caring for Your Family webpage for details about Penn’s dependent care benefits. 

November and December Volunteer Opportunities

It is giving season once again, and Penn Volunteers in Public Service (VIPS) have organized holiday drives to collect donations for local families and agencies. Faculty and staff volunteers have a positive impact throughout the year. Please join them to make a difference in the lives of our neighbors this winter.

Here are opportunities to share holiday cheer with local families, coordinated by Penn VIPS.

Holiday Food Drive now through November 18

In the season of thanks, Penn VIPS are collecting non-perishable foods (cans and boxed foods) as well as turkeys. These donations will re-stock pantries at Salvation Army, Southwest Family Services, the People’s Emergency Center, and local schools to feed families in the area. Please take donated items to a conveniently located on-campus Penn VIPS site. For more information, contact your nearest drop site committee members listed below.

Holiday Gift Drive, December 1 – December 16

As you buy toys and presents for the holiday season, please consider spreading some cheer to those in need. All toys and gifts donated will support the efforts of organizations including the People's Emergency Shelter, local schools, Potter's Mission, Southwest Family Services, and many more. New sneakers will benefit Otley House and other local shelters.

All items for the holiday drive must be new. No gift wrapping, please.

Please contact one of the drop site committee members listed below for more details.

Penn VIPS Adopt a Family Program now through December 16

The Adopt a Family program is a gratifying opportunity for your department or team to give directly to a specific family in the Philadelphia area. The adoption is usually done in lieu of departmental gift exchanges. The assigned family is treated to presents and sometimes holiday dinner in December. Assignments are made during and prior to mid-December.

Your department chooses the size of the family they would like to adopt. Participating departments will be provided with the names and address of the family, or the family may wish to remain anonymous. Departments may request a wish list from the family or they may choose their own gifts for the family members. Departments choose the number and types of gifts they will provide. Departments are provided with the family members’ names, ages, and sizes.

Your department has many options for divvying up the gift gathering for the adopted family. For example, you may pool resources to purchase a gift card, elect one person in your department to shop and deliver your online purchases to the family, or allow individuals in your department to choose their own gifts to send directly to the family.

Families are selected from clients of the Baring House Family Service Agency, People’s Emergency Shelter, and other local agencies and shelters. A small number of referrals are also accepted. Families participate in the program on a one-time basis.

To adopt a family, contact Isabel Sampson-Mapp, Associate Director at Netter Center for Community Partnerships, at  sammapp@upenn.edu.

Drop Site Committee Members

Thanks to these Penn VIPs staff members for leading these efforts to spread generosity this winter. Please contact volunteers for exact drop site location.

You can join Penn VIPS as a drop site volunteer to increase drop off locations around the University for its spring, summer, and winter donation drives.

Volunteer activities include helping to advertise the event, managing collections, as well as delivering the donated items to our central location.

Contact Isabel Mapp at 898-2020 or sammapp@pobox.upenn.edu for additional information.

Create Your Own Volunteer Activity for Your Department

Would you and your colleagues or friends like to participate in other volunteer activities? Penn VIPS is happy to connect you to an activity or help you develop one of your own.

Contact Isabel Mapp at 898-2020 or sammapp@pobox.upenn.edu for additional information.

Learn more about Penn VIPS and other Netter Center for Community Partnerships programs at www.nettercenter.upenn.edu.

Seeing Through the Fog of Anxiety

Chances are you or someone you work with may be dealing with excessive anxiety. On top of justifiable concerns about global insecurity or personal difficulties, undue worry can have very real effects on our health. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that 15% of U.S. adults experienced mild to severe anxiety symptoms during 2019. By some estimates, nearly one in three adults will experience an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. This includes conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety, panic, phobias, or posttraumatic stress. Dr. Lily Brown, Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry and Director of Penn’s Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety Disorders, studies and treats these common yet complex illnesses.

“Anxiety lives in the gray area,” says Brown. This emotion appears at times of uncertainty in the fog between potential risks to our safety and real danger. While these feelings are unsettling and sometimes intense, Brown encourages us to understand them. Her practice has shown that we can see only through the fog when we accept the anxious emotions instead of denying them.

From Adaptation to Disorder

“It is quite healthy for any of us to experience anxiety from time to time,” says Brown. Like fear and pain, anxiety is essential to survival. In most cases, our temporary worries motivate us to play it safe, plan ahead, and reduce risk. However, when anxiety remains long after potential danger is gone, or the brain’s false alarms keep ringing, this adaptation becomes a threat to our well-being.

Too much anxiety, or even the fear of this feeling, can overwhelm or distort thinking, drive people to avoid opportunities instead of hazards, and interfere with activities ranging from sleeping to opening emails to maintaining social ties. When you spend excessive energy and time checking for potential danger, avoiding it, or hiding from anxiety itself, it can get in the way of living a whole, meaningful life. “These are all indications that something has tipped the scales from healthy, adaptive anxiety to an anxiety disorder,” says Brown. “This isn’t just ‘Oh, I’m a little worried.’ This is about misery that people get sucked into and stuck in.”

There are many supports available to Penn faculty and staff and their loved ones dealing with anxiety. These include behavioral healthcare covered by Penn’s health plans and services such as the Employee Assistance Program, which is available 24/7 at 1-866-766-2329. Visit www.hr.upenn.edu/Mindwell for details.

Exposure Can Break the Cycle

“Anxiety loves itself,” says Brown. “The typical pattern people run into is they feel anxious about something, so they avoid that thing. And the more they avoid it, the worse the anxiety gets over time.”

To break this cycle, Brown offers one method that may feel counterintuitive. She says, “Usually, the solution is to do the opposite of whatever the anxiety is telling you to do, provided the thing is objectively safe. We always recommend that you start low and slow.” For example, when anxiety says, just keep bending over backwards to accommodate other people's needs, try saying no to a small favor.

This approach, called exposure therapy, has been proven effective in study after study, whether you have an anxiety disorder or whether you’re just trying to practice healthy emotion regulation in general. “Granted,” says Brown, “it's much harder when someone's struggling with an anxiety disorder. Try something that will give you a sense of accomplishment, but that's not jumping off the deep end in terms of difficulty.”

Fast Relief

Exposure therapy techniques take time and patience, but what if you need fast relief for workplace worries? For a fast healthy way to temporarily turn off over-active mental alarms without denying them, Brown and her colleagues suggest using harmless physical sensations, such as touching ice cubes, to distract from emotional stress. “It's literally holding a piece of ice in your palm, putting on your wrist, putting on the back of your neck, or if you work from home and you have a freezer, filling a bowl with ice water and dunking your face in it.” Since literal chilling isn’t right for everyone, Brown encourages people to think about other accessible sensory items, such as a scented lotion or a fidget toy, that have helped them reset feelings or re-channel anxious energy. These items can be part of your distress tolerance tool kit if you work in a challenging setting or tend to experience powerful emotions that can drive you off course.

“Make an actual kit so that the sensory materials are on-hand,” says Brown “A shoebox or cloth shopping bag is great for this.” The kit can also be digital, like a music set list or folder with positive, inspiring images, so you can store it on a phone.

“We know that lotions and toys aren’t going to stop the cause of anxiety, but that’s not the goal. The goal is just to bring down the intensity.”

Deeper Reflection

When you have time and space, Brown recommends thoughtful reflection to understand your anxiety triggers from a distance. “Take an example of a time when you felt really upset and map [it] out. Write down what was going through your mind,” says Brown. “What were you doing or tempted to do and what were you feeling in your body?” Using a journal or a log can give this process structure, so it doesn’t seem overwhelming. “By writing it down, you start to become more aware of your patterns, which can give you some distance from the intensity of the emotions. Then, you can ask yourself, ‘isn't that interesting that my brain does that?’” This technique may help you face anxiety with compassion and curiosity instead of being trapped by it.

To learn more about anxiety, Brown recommends these resources:

• The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies
• The Anxiety & Depression Association of America

For assistance locating a behavioral health care provider, contact Health Advocate at 1-866-766-2329.

Penn’s Way Campaign Ends Friday

This is the last week of the Penn's Way workplace charitable giving campaign, but there is still time for you to make a difference. Thanks to the generosity of University employees, the campaign has raised over $1 million and it’s still going strong.

Join your coworkers in Going the Distance for Our Community with your donation to the Penn's Way campaign before it concludes on Friday, November 18.

Penn's Way gives University of Pennsylvania and Penn Medicine faculty and staff the opportunity to give back to the communities in which we live and work. As one of Philadelphia's largest private employers, our collective contributions have the power to reach farther.

Participation is easier than ever. Pledges can be entered on the mobile-friendly Penn's Way website at pennsway.upenn.edu. Pledging online is secure, convenient, efficient, and supports our sustainability efforts.

There are many great raffle prizes to be awarded during this last week, and everyone who takes part is eligible to win.

Thank you for supporting Penn’s Way!

Healthy Meals: Butternut Squash and White Bean Chili

As the holidays approach, many look forward to warm, homey comfort meals. This savory dish is not only flavorful, but it is also full of several important vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Enjoy this chili during this cold fall weather!

Click here to send us your healthy recipes and tips.

Recipe inspired by: AZGRABAPLATE.COM

Yields: 4-5 servings

Ingredients:

¼ cup nutritional yeast

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2 large garlic gloves, minced

½ bunch cilantro, stems and leaves divided

1 medium carrot, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

2 large jalapeños, deseeded and finely diced

½ teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

3-4 cups cannellini beans, cooked and rinsed or2 15.5-ounce cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

3 - 3 ½ cups butternut squash, diced into ¼” cubes or 1-12-ounce bag of frozen butternut squash

3 ½ cups vegetable broth, divided

Salt and black pepper, to taste

Instructions:

Toast the nutritional yeast: Add the flakes to a large non-stick pot and cook over medium heat for 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently. The flakes will darken, become fragrant, and start to smoke when they are toasted.

Add the diced onion, minced garlic and chopped cilantro stems to the pot along with 1/4 cup of the vegetable broth. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and sauté the onion, garlic, and cilantro until translucent, about 3-5 minutes.

Add the bell pepper, carrot, jalapeño, cumin, and smoked paprika to the pot along with another small splash of broth. Sauté for an additional 1-2 minutes.

Finally, add the beans, cubed butternut squash, and the remainder of the vegetable broth to the pot; bring to a boil over high heat, and then reduce the heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes, stirring every few minutes to help break down the squash.

Meet With a Registered Dietitian Today!

• One-on-One, virtual sessions you can schedule at any time that works for you
• 100% covered under many insurance plans
• Available to spouses and dependents
• Fill out the Nutrition Counseling Sign Up Form  or call 800-484-7720. 

Did You Know: Paradigm Scholarship for Working Women

The Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia’s Paradigm Scholarship for Working Women is awarded annually to women who wish to complete their undergraduate degrees while working full-time for Chamber member organizations such as Penn. Applications are due on December 9, 2022. Winners receive up to $5,000. Chamber member employees who do not already receive full tuition reimbursement may apply at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PSWW2023App.