Marketing Workplace Chronic Disease Prevention

The objective of the project is to understand how best to help mid-size employers adopt evidence-based chronic disease prevention practices that improve employee health behaviors.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Chronic Disease; Health Behavior
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Workplace Solutions Consulting approach; Behavioral: Delayed intervention

Detailed Description

Employers have the incentive and the means to play a key role in chronic disease prevention. The incentive - employers need to control the costly and growing burden of chronic diseases among their employees. The means - employers purchase 94% of private health insurance, and employees spend one third of their lives in the workplace, where they often eat, move, socialize, and smoke. Over the past 5 years, the CDC and the Task Force on Community Preventive Services have recommended a number of chronic disease prevention practices. Among these, we have identified 17 practices that employers should adopt. These practices include health insurance benefits, workplace policies, and workplace programs, and aim at increasing employees' disease screening, healthy eating, influenza immunization, physical activity and tobacco cessation. Unfortunately, employer surveys reveal low adoption of these practices.

Working with the American Cancer Society, our research team from the University of Washington has developed and pilot-tested an innovative consulting intervention to increase adoption of these practices. Our two-stage intervention is comprehensive yet tailored by employer feedback.

The intervention:

• markets the "business case" that employers can help control health-care costs and productivity losses through adoption of these practices
• enables implementation by providing tools for each practice.

In this proposal, our primary aim is to test this intervention in a randomized, controlled trial among 48 medium-sized employers with a high proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged employees in the Puget Sound area. Our primary outcome is change in employer practices as measured by survey and validated by audit and contract and policy review.

Our secondary aims include:

• development and pilot-testing of an employee-level health risk behavior survey
• cost analysis and assessment of feasibility of our intervention
• assessment of employees' preference for different message sources and message appeals.

Our multidisciplinary research team includes business, communication, and public health faculty and has more than 10 years of experience in both chronic disease prevention and working with business. If successful, our team's approach has broad applicability to other public health problems.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 48
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Washington
    • Seattle, Washington, United States, 98105
      • University of Washington

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child; Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Corporate size equal to 100 to 999 part-time and full-time employees (excluding seasonal and temporary workers)
• Headquarters located in King County, Washington, and in a zip code within a 30 mile radius of the research center
• Within an industry with an average annual salary below the median annual salary for King County, Washington (defined by 3-digit NAICS code)
• 50% or more employees are age 35 or older

Exclusion Criteria:

• Do not offer health insurance to full-time employees
• In existence for less than 3 years
• No physical address to which employees report
• Current or previous participation in other workplace health promotion study
• Recent refuser or non-responder for other current workplace health promotion study
• Current participant in other American Cancer Society employer program
• Not willing to be randomized to intervention or comparison group

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Intervention; Intervention Group - Workplace Solutions Consulting	Behavioral: Workplace Solutions Consulting approach; Consulting process includes: baseline measure of best practices; gap analysis and recommendations reporting; delivery of "solution set" toolkits for each practice chosen for implementation
Active Comparator: 2; Delayed Intervention	Behavioral: Delayed intervention; Abbreviated version of the Workplace Solutions Consulting process applied in the intervention group

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Time Frame
Change in employer practices in health benefits, policies and programs	15 month follow-up survey

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Time Frame
Development and pilot-testing of an employee-level health risk behavior survey	within 12 months of recruitment completion
Cost analysis and assessment of feasibility of this intervention	within 15 months of recommendations

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Washington
• Collaborators: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; American Cancer Society, Inc.
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Jeffrey R Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, University of Washington

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Hannon PA, Harris JR, Sopher CJ, Kuniyuki A, Ghosh DL, Henderson S, Martin DP, Weaver MR, Williams B, Albano DL, Meischke H, Diehr P, Lichiello P, Hammerback KE, Parks MR, Forehand M. Improving low-wage, midsized employers' health promotion practices: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Prev Med. 2012 Aug;43(2):125-33. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2012.04.014.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: April 1, 2007
• Primary Completion (Actual): August 1, 2009
• Study Completion (Actual): September 1, 2009

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: March 26, 2007
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 26, 2007
• First Posted (Estimate): March 28, 2007

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): November 20, 2009
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 18, 2009
• Last Verified: November 1, 2009

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Health Promotion; Prevention & Control; Workplace; Chronic Disease; Mass Screening; Tobacco Use Cessation; Employer Health Costs; Insurance Benefits; Marketing of Health Services
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Pathologic Processes; Disease Attributes; Chronic Disease
• Other Study ID Numbers: 06-4829-E/G 01; CDC Grant 1 PO1 CD000249-01