Recommendations include:

• the option for employers to hold a ‘protected’, without-prejudice conversation with employees about their condition, as many are afraid of being taken to an employment tribunal;
• expenditure to keep ill employees in work – e.g. medical treatment or rehabilitation – could attract tax relief;
• a proposal for an independent assessment service that would assess individual’s health after four weeks off work, and find ways to help them back to work; and
• a job-brokering service for those off work for 20 weeks or more, which could help those unable to return to work at their previous job.

Sources: Financial Times, 21 November 2011 and Health at Work: An Independent Review of Sickness Absence, published 21 November 2011.

The poll used a Well-Being Index of self-reported height and weight to calculate BMI, and took note of chronic conditions including major NCDs, high blood pressure or cholesterol or recurring pain in neck, back or legs in the past 12 months. It estimated that the lost productivity among those who are overweight or with a condition is more than $153 billion. Compared with the healthy, normal weight workers – who make up just 14 per cent of full-time employees – those with health and weight issues miss an estimated 450 million extra days of work a year.

Unhealthy days were calculated using answers to a question about how many days in the past month respondents found that poor health kept them from doing usual activities, with the poll indicating that a day of work is missed for roughly every three unhealthy days.

Healthy, normal weight full-time workers averaged 0.34 unhealthy days each month, or about four days per year, with a tiny rise for workers who were overweight with no chronic conditions – but overweight workers with three or more chronic health conditions (about 18 per cent of the workforce) reported an average of about 42 unhealthy days per year.

And it is not just in the United States: the workforce is not much healthier in the United Kingdom – just 20 per cent of employees are neither overweight nor have a chronic condition.

Source: Reuters, 17 October 2011.

The Centers for Disease Control has awarded a $9 million grant to establish the programme, selected through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and it will be delivered by Veridian Health Management. Veridian will work with small, medium and large companies, using funds to assist each participating employer to implement a core set of WHP programme elements, and each employer will receive a full-service wellness programme for the two years of the intervention. Veridian’s president, Brenda Schmidt, noted that the project will also build community partnerships both to enhance programme activity and also to set up the knowledge transfer that will help to make the programme sustainable.

The Research Triangle Institute, based in North Carolina, will evaluate the programme, including capturing best practice and documenting challenges and strategies to overcome them.

Sources: Stone Hearth News, 4 October 2011 and CDC website (here: http://www.cdc.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/nhwp/index.html)

This latest study, after adjusting for obesity, found that women who worked regular night shifts (three or more working nights per month) were more likely to develop diabetes – a 6 per cent increase was seen among women who had done the shifts for 3–9 years, increasing to 9 per cent for those who had worked 10–19 years, and a 20 per cent rise for those who had been in the job for 20 years or more. The increase in weight over the period is thought by the authors to account for some (but not all) of the rise.

Source: Health Day, 27 June 2011.

The study compared data relating to relating to emergency pulmonary, cardiac and cerebrovascular hospital admissions for the two years before and after the smoking ban came into force, taking into account population, weather, pollution and flu data. The researchers indicated that the positive changes could reflect the decrease in exposure to smoke in the workplace.

Source: Newswise, 11 May 2011.

Tobacco is, in some cases, effectively treated like an illegal drug, with job applicants being made to take urine tests and with any new employees found to be smoking facing the sack. Unsurprisingly, there is considerable debate over whether these policies – which intrude into private lives of employees who are indulging in a legal activity (and who may be addicted and unable to kick the habit) – are a step too far.

The idea is not new – more than half of US states have passed laws making such bans on smokers illegal (but others have found the intervention to be legal) – but the importance of health (and being seen to be healthy) in hospitals seems to be encouraging interest among employers in the sector. Hospitals in, among other places, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas have already stopped employing smokers in the past year.

So – is this a sensible move to protect employees, visitors and patients, and to stop the current ‘subsidising’ of extra health-care costs of smokers by non-smokers? Or is it the thin end of the wedge, with employers increasingly taking an interest in areas of employees’ lives previously considered to be private?

Source: New York Times, 10 February 2011.

Each participant had to choose at least three ways in which they would improve family lifestyles from areas such as making better food choices (the most popular choice), collaborative physical activity, decreasing screen time and positive parental role-modelling. Goals included eating fast food no more than one a week, eating five-a-day, walking to school once a week, or involving children in preparing meals.

An accompanying website provided an interactive meal-planning tool, family-friendly healthy recipes, a physical-activity tracker and tips for reducing time spent watching television or on computers. Children were involved in all decision-making, and filling in the tracking sheet was completed by the family daily.

The study, reported in Pediatrics, found that family physical activity done more than three times per week went up 17.1 per cent, while eating healthy dinners five or more times a week went up by 11.8 per cent. The proportion of children spending less than an hour a day watching television or playing computer games went up 8.3 per cent. (The authors of the study cautioned, however, that this is all self-reported information.)

Sources: USA Today and Business Week, 4 October 2010.

The study of 5,000 Caucasian men found that those most at risk were those who were both unfit and worked more than 45 hours a week. Unfit men who worked just 41 to 45 hours a week were 59 per cent more likely to die of heart disease than men working fewer hours.

However, their colleagues who are fit are 45 per cent less likely to die of heart disease and 38 per cent less likely to die of other causes than their unfit peers, regardless of working hours.

The study used self-reporting of physical activity and work hours, and tested men’s fitness using bicycle ergometers.

Source: Business Week, 7 September 2010.

• The International Community Health Awards are for organisations whose ideas in health promotion and disease prevention have made a significant contribution to improving the well-being of individuals and local communities.  Each initiative will receive a $5,000 towards continuing their work.
• The International Workplace Health Awards will highlight workplace health-promotion initiatives that have successfully improved health and reduced disease risk.

The awards have been established by URAC and the Global Knowledge Exchange Network on Health (GKEN). The deadline for submitting nominations is 3 September. For more information, visit www.aihpa.org

Source: AIHPA press release.

However, while this makes a strong case for the role of overtime in heart disease, lead researcher Mianna Virtanen, an epidemiologist at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki and University College London, said: ‘More research is needed before we can be confident that overtime work would cause coronary heart disease.’

What is apparent, though, is that an active lifestyle and healthy diet can minimise risk and so workplaces should make the effort to be more accommodating and encouraging to employers to help them stay fit and healthy. Cathy Ross, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, which part-funded the research, pointed out that small changes can make a difference to health: ‘there are simple ways to look after your heart health at work, like taking a brisk walk at lunch, taking the stairs instead of the lift, or by swapping that biscuit for a piece of fruit.’

Source: BBC News online, 11 May 2010.