Participation and cardiovascular risk reduction in a voluntary worksite nutrition and physical activity program
Introduction
The worksite is ideal for preventing and treating obesity because a majority of adults spend substantial time at work (Baicker et al., 2010), and employers pay more for obese workers in health care, disability, and absenteeism expenses (Aldana and Pronk, 2001, Durden et al., 2008, Wang et al., 2004). The Task Force on Community Preventive Services recommended that worksite programs should include both nutrition and physical activity interventions (Katz et al., 2005). Although these interventions result in modest weight loss, most reported studies lack the data to determine if high risk employees benefit from them (Anderson et al., 2009). However, employers are reluctant to target obese or high risk employees (Mello and Rosenthal, 2008, Schmidt et al., 2010, Okie, 2007), and most wellness programs are open to all employees regardless of weight or lifestyle habits (Baicker et al., 2010). There is little data to determine if wellness programs offered to all employees are making the healthy workers healthier or if they can effectively recruit and treat higher risk employees. We collected data on employees who volunteered for a worksite nutrition and physical activity program to determine whether baseline body mass index (BMI) was associated with program completion, weight loss, and improvement in cholesterol and blood pressure.
Section snippets
Methods
This study received institutional approval from the Partners Healthcare Institutional Review Board in June 2006.
Results
Table 1 shows baseline characteristics of Be Fit participants by baseline BMI category. Sixty-three percent were overweight or obese, and thirty-seven percent were normal weight. The prevalence of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes increased with BMI category. Obese and overweight participants reported fewer hours of physical activity per week than normal weight participants.
A total of 82% of participants completed the 10 week program. The oldest participants were more likely to complete
Discussion
Our study showed modest improvements for all employees in weight and cardiovascular risk factors at the end of the program and at 1 year follow-up. The higher risk obese participants lost more weight during the program than the normal weight participants, but the reductions in cholesterol and blood pressure did not differ by BMI category. Although a limitation of this study is a lack of a control group who did not participate in the program, this is the first study of a worksite program to our
Conflict of interest statement
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
Dr. Thorndike is supported by the grant 1K23 HL93221-01 A1 from the National Institutes of Health. The sponsor had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; and preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript. We thank Jeff Davis, Senior Vice President, Human Resources at Massachusetts General Hospital, for his support of the Be Fit employee wellness program.
The authors are independent of any commercial funder, have full
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