Health Promotion Intervention Program at the Workplace

Introduction: The incidence of cardiovascular disease and related illnesses has been on the rise throughout the past decades. This increase is highly linked to a diet that is both high in calories and saturated fats as well as low levels of physical activity that may cause to an increase of body weight, percent of body fat and in some cases to obesity. It has been known that low levels of physical activity or sedentary behavior is a dominant risk factor for developing cardiovascular diseases.

At the work place, employees' work capacity and efficiency can highly be affected by a sedentary lifestyle and overweight conditions. A lack of physical activity was found to be associated with low levels of production at the workplace. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between employees' lifestyle and number of days on a sick leave. Studies have shown that obesity and a lack of physical activity are significant risk factors for absenteeism.

In the past years, several studies have examined the effect of intervention programs on lifestyle behavior changes and the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases(CAD). The results of those studies are quite equivocal. Some have demonstrated a positive effect of the intervention programs on decreasing CAD risk factors and obesity rates, while others have found no clear effect. The conflicting results could be due to methodological issues and different studies' designs. For example, some studies did not report the amount and the intensity of the physical activity program used in the intervention program. Furthermore, some intervention programs did not include a nutritional manipulation. In a recent review papers, it was found that the most efficient programs were those that combined group workshops, guided physical activity programs and individualized counseling sessions for employers that were at a higher risk for developing CAD. Intervention program that included mainly guided physical activity were found to be less effective. It should be noted that the optimal program format that should be implemented at the workplace is not completely clear.

Study purpose: To examine the effect of health promotion intervention program at the workplace on risk factors to cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, well-being, life-style behavior and absenteeism at the workplace.

Subjects: The study will be approved by the local ethics committee. All participants will sign an informed consent form. Study's participants will include adult male and female (older than 18yrs). The 1500 participants will be recruited from 10 different worksites across Israel.