An integrative perspective on work-site health promotion

Abstract

The present paper argues that health promotion efforts, particularly those directed to resistant and high-risk workers, should be integrated into a corporate health strategy in which equal concern is expressed for individual lifestyle modification and the provision of safe and healthful working conditions. The current popularity of work-site health promotion is discussed, and the health promotion and occupational safety and health movements are compared and contrasted. Following this, ecologic models of health promotion are examined as a vehicle for addressing environmental and organizational influences, and this line of thinking is expanded into an integrative model of worker health. The proposed model features three interactive systems: (1) job demands and worker characteristics, (2) work environment, and (3) extraorganizational influences, and assigns an expanded role to environmental factors in promoting and protecting worker health. The principal goal of integrative programming is to devise complementary behavioral and environmental interventions that will have mutually reinforcing effects on workplace health problems. The remainder of the paper outlines the three phases of implementing such a program.