STAR-VITAL, a Four Year Comprehensive Workplace Health Promotion Program: Study Design

Background: Premature death, chronic disease, and productivity loss can be reduced with the help of programs that promote a healthy lifestyle. Workplace health promotion programs have been shown to be an efficient way of improving employee health. These can also benefit employers by improving retention, reducing worker turnover, and lowering healthcare costs. In Slovenia, a workplace health promotion program called “STAR-VITAL—Joint Measures for the Vitality of Older Workers” targeting small- and medium-sized enterprises has been ongoing since September 2017. We hypothesize that this workplace health promotion program will yield long-term health changes for the included employees and employers. Methods/Design: The manuscript presents a workplace health promotion program design that introduces some novel approaches and solutions to workplace health promotion program implementation. It also introduces a measurement of their effects that address the problem of low participation rates and the effectiveness of workplace health promotion programs, as follows: (1) the multifaceted and individualised approach to implementation, (2) customer relationship management (CRM) -based interaction management with program participants, and (3) impact evaluation based on employee health and labour market data observing both intermediate outcomes and the final outcomes based on national micro administrative data. Discussion: Although the novel approaches introduced with the STAR-VITAL program proved to be effective during the COVID-19 pandemic, they deserve the attention of scholars and practitioners. Further research is called for to further explore the potential of CRM in health promotion contexts, the effectiveness of multifaceted and individualised workplace health promotion program interventions, and micro administrative data-based impact evaluations. Conclusions: The STAR-VITAL program introduces several new approaches addressing the problem of low participation rates and the effectiveness of WHPPs. Further research is called for to discover and explore the potential of those novel approaches.

Graphene-TiO2 hybrids for photocatalytic aided removal of VOCs and nitrogen oxides from outdoor environment

Outdoor and indoor air pollution has become a global concern in modern society. Although many policies and regulations on air quality have been promulgated worldwide over the past decades, airborne pollution still negatively affects health and therefore the life-style of human beings. One of the strategies to challenge this problem might be reducing the amount of airborne pollutant by mineralising them via photoinduced reactions. Photocatalytic oxidation of gaseous pollutants via titanium dioxide is one of the most promising solar photochemical reactions. In this research work, by means of a green sol-gel procedure, we have coupled titania to graphene (0.5 and 1.0 wt%) aiming to increase the solar photocatalytic activity of the produced hybrid materials. Transient paramagnetic species formed upon UV-A irradiation were detected by means of EPR spectroscopy. The photocatalytic reactions were assessed by monitoring the removal of nitrogen oxides and two different volatile organic compounds (benzene and isopropanol), which has never been assessed before. Our results highlight the exceptional characteristics of the TiO₂/graphene hybrid material synthesised with 1.0 wt% graphene, and its excellent suitability for multi-purpose applications in the field of environmental remediation. Compared to unmodified titania, it shows a clear enhancement in the photocatalytic removal of those hazardous pollutants, having a photocatalytic degradation rate twice higher. In addition, the same material is highly stable and shows fully recyclability over repeated tests. Hybrid titania-graphene materials could thus be exploited to grant safer outdoor and indoor environments, having thus a beneficial impact on public health and on the quality of our lives.

E-platform as an innovative approach to workplace health promotion for ageing workforce

Issue

Dissatisfaction of workers with working conditions often leads to a reluctance to extend the working period. In the STAR-VITAL project, we encourage stakeholders to address the challenges of an aging workforce, prolonging work activity, maintaining health and work ability, based on the concepts of salutogenesis, healthy organization and WHO Healthy Workplaces model.

Description of the Problem

E-platform is an innovative approach to promote and monitor healthy lifestyles of employees and companies' management in the areas of ergonomics, stress, communication, nutrition, sleep, age management and absenteeism. The E-platform addresses the challenge of low levels of employee participation in health promotion programs offered to employees by companies. The E-platform builds upon the Customer relationship management (CRM) and brings a push approach to actively engage employees with customized campaigns to encourage behaviour change.

Results

As the project runs in multiple waves, we present the findings of the first group of 31 (out of 110) companies that began with the management, ergonomics, stress and nutrition campaigns. The output indicators show high participation rate of 65% - 20 companies out of 31 are actively participating in the program and high levels of user satisfaction (with a rating 4.5 out of 5). The impact of the intervention will be evaluated with the propensity score matching. The average share of readings of the received contents of all campaigns is 50%.

Lessons

Regardless of the potential of modern work health promotion solutions, it is very important that project contractors maintain close personal contacts and intensive communication with companies. Where such interaction has been established, there is a noticeable shift in the intensity of health promotion activities and the proportion of employees who voluntarily participate in these activities.

Key messages

The salutogenic push approach promises a improved impact of workplace health interventions. The E-Platform, besides informing, enables support and empowerment of workers for personal intervention and its higher impact.