An Inexpensive Workplace Initiative to Motivate High-Risk Individual Health Improvement
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2013
Abstract
Unhealthy lifestyles cost businesses, governmental organizations, and the U.S. military billions of dollars every year, not to mention intangible costs associated with increased mortality. This study implemented a low-cost cognitive-behavioral motivational intervention to effect behavioral change in high-risk civilian employees working for a U.S. military organization, with accompanying improvement in certain health indicators after 120 days compared with a control group. Our analysis of these results led to two conclusions: first, low-cost cognitive-behavioral motivational treatments can improve both behavior and health, and second, tentative results indicate a fully mediated relationship may exist among the cognitive variables of locus of control and self-efficacy, vice the predicted parallel relationship. Overall, we assert that effective implementation of an intervention like the one used in this study might lower the U.S. Air Force's health care bill by as much as $40 million, improve employee efficiency and mission capability, enable healthier lives, and prevent premature death.
DOI
10.7205/MILMED-D-13-00065
Source Publication
Military Medicine
Recommended Citation
Kirchner, A. T., Ladd, D. A., Elshaw, J. J., & Schlub, J. F. (2013). An Inexpensive Workplace Initiative to Motivate High-Risk Individual Health Improvement. Military Medicine, 178(8), e948–e953. https://doi.org/10.7205/MILMED-D-13-00065
Comments
The "Link to Full Text" button on this page loads the open access article version of record, hosted at Oxford University Press. The publisher retains permissions to re-use and distribute this article.