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.
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.
