Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

David M. DeJoy, PhD¹, Lindsay J. Della, MS¹, Mark Wilson, HSD¹, Jennifer R. Schneider, MPH, PhD², Enid Chung Roemer, PhD³, Ron Z. Goetzel, PhD³, Ronald J. Ozminkowski, PhD², David Shechter, PhD², and Maryam J. Tabrizi, MS, CHES². (1) Health Promotion and Behavior, University of Georgia, 300 River Road, Athens, GA 30602, 706-542-4368, dmdejoy@uga.edu, (2) Health and Productivity Research, Thomson Medstat, 4301Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 330, Washington, DC 20008, (3) Institute for Health and Productivity Studies, Cornell University Institute for Policy Research, 4301 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 330, Washington, DC 20008

Increasingly, organizations view the environment as an important mechanism for fostering healthy employee behavior. This presentation will discuss the development of an Environmental Assessment Tool (EAT) designed to assess how well an organization's physical environment combats obesity. The EAT extends assessment efforts beyond the physical activity focus of most environmental assessments developed to date, widening its reach to include other organizational characteristics that affect weight/obesity management. Specifically, the EAT assesses three categories of an organization's environment: (1) physical activity (2) healthy food choices/weight management programs, and (3) organizational support for health initiatives (e.g., written policies). The EAT is currently being used in two federally funded worksite health studies. This session will address how the EAT has been employed by organizations involved in these studies as a diagnostic tool, as well as how it is being used by researchers as a measure of intervention outcome. Preliminary data indicate that the EAT effectively captures variations in environmental characteristics that can impact obesity. In one organization, total EAT scores ranged from 18.66 to 46.50 (out of 100 possible points) across different sites. Additionally, EAT scores appear to exhibit predictive validity with other indicators of organizational commitment to obesity management; e.g., an independent measure of worksite support for health initiatives correlated strongly with EAT organizational support scores (r=.816, p<.01). In this session, attendees should expect to learn about the development and refinement of the EAT for different uses (diagnostic vs. research), plus multi-site data collection strategies well-suited for compiling EAT data (e.g., PDA methodologies).

Learning Objectives:

• • Participants will articulate the importance and the role of environmental supports for promoting and maintaining healthy behaviors.
• • Participants will understand how the EAT is scored, and what differences in scores imply about the relationship between physical environment and health risks.
• • Participants will learn how to utilize the EAT to assess environmental influences for supporting healthy behaviors in their organizations.
• • Participants will recognize the strengths and limitations of different data collection strategies within the context of administering the EAT across several different worksites

Keywords: Worksite, Obesity

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation