Impact of a Health Empowerment-focused Program on Adult Employee’s Motivators of and Barriers to Engaging in Healthy Behaviors

ABSTRACT

Background: Health initiatives have been established in many workplaces to promote healthy behaviors among employees. Health Self-Empowerment Theory (HSET) suggests that personal, modifiable factors, such as motivation to engage in healthy behaviors, are pathways to increasing such behaviors. Purpose: The present study examined the effects of the Health-Smart Behavior Program^TM (Health-Smart), which is informed by HSET, on levels of perceived motivators of and barriers to engaging in healthy eating and physical activity among a sample of employees at a large health insurance company. Methods: Participants were 97 culturally diverse employees at this company who were divided into intervention and control groups. Results: From pre-intervention to post-intervention, the intervention group experienced significantly greater increases in motivators to engage in healthy eating and physical activity and significantly greater decreases in barriers to engaging in these behaviors. Discussion: Health-Smart may be effective in increasing motivation to engage in healthy behaviors among workplace employees. Translation to Health Education Practice: This study suggests that health educators who develop workplace health promotion programs use a theoretical framework (e.g., HSET) to inform these programs, implement a first-step program to increase motivators of and reduce barriers to these behaviors, and empirically evaluate these programs.

Disclosure statement

The authors of this study do not report any financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of your research.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Florida Inc. (Contract#00091459).