American journal of preventive medicine
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Review Meta Analysis
Workplace health promotion: a meta-analysis of effectiveness.
An unhealthy lifestyle may contribute to ill health, absence due to sickness, productivity loss at work, and reduced ability to work. Workplace health promotion programs (WHPPs) aim to improve lifestyle and consequently improve health, work ability, and work productivity. However, systematic reviews on intervention studies have reported small effects, and the overall evaluation of effectiveness of WHPPs is hampered by a large heterogeneity in interventions and study populations. This systematic review aims to investigate the influence of population, study and intervention characteristics, and study quality on the effectiveness of workplace health promotion programs. ⋯ The effectiveness of a WHPP is partly determined by intervention characteristics and statistical analysis. High-quality RCTs reported lower effect sizes. It is important to determine the effectiveness of WHPPs in RCTs of high quality.