Workplace programmes aimed at decreasing hypertension could go quite a long way to improving employees’ overall health, new research has suggested.
A study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine argued that worksite hypertension management programmes can be of benefit, especially to “protective service” workers such as police officers and firefighters.
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Such workers ranked among the lowest in awareness (50.6%), treatment (79.3%) and control (47.7%) of hypertension. Other occupations, such as motor vehicle operators, mechanics and repair workers, fabricators, assemblers and samples workers, and cleaning and building service occupations also had a high prevalence of hypertension.
Other modifications of the work environment (such as making a cafeteria available, especially one with healthy food choices), offering exercise facilities and the installation of self-testing health stations could all be beneficial to employees’ health, the US study concluded.
