Worksite health programs: working together to advance employee health.

Abstract

The workplace is a common context within which health promotion, disease prevention, and injury prevention programs are conducted.1,2 Health educators have been important contributors to the burgeoning area of worksite health promotion (WHP), with its traditional focus on individual behavior change of personal risk factors (e.g., smoking, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet). Recently, health educators and health behavior specialists are taking a more active role in occupational safety and health (OSH) programs that address the influence of physical, chemical, and psychosocial work exposures on employee health. For WHP efforts, the worksite serves as a convenient venue for health programs, providing access to adult populations that might otherwise be hard to reach and providing organizational structures and norms that can facilitate successful individual behavior change (e.g., employer-provided incentives and the social influence of coworkers) 3 In contrast, OSH interventions attempt to reduce exposure to aspects of the worksite that are deleterious to employee health. OSH interventions may involve engineering strategies (e.g., making physical modifications to the worksite or work process), administrative strategies (e.g., management initiatives that modify the work process or environment), and individual behavior change strategies (e.g., educational training to increase personal protective equipment use) 4 4