Impact of a worksite health promotion intervention on health climate in rural Mississippi

In order to assess the impact of worksite health promotion programs it is necessary to measure employee attitudes and perceptions relating to healthy lifestyle, referred to as health climate. The purpose of this investigation was to assess how health climate scores were affected by participation in a 12-week physical activity and education based health improvement program. Health climate was measured using an instrument developed by the authors. The 40-item, likert response, theory based instrument was validated using structural equation modeling. Reliability was assessed using internal reliability measures. Pre and post intervention health climate scores from 183 furniture manufacturing employees analyzed after a 12 week intervention. A significant difference in post-test health climate score t(175)=2.540, p=0.012, two-tailed, 95% C.I.=.025-.203, for those that participated in the intervention and those who did not. Further investigation into the difference in means using MANOVA procedures indicated that participants scored significantly lower on the interpersonal scale for the post-test, F(6,7919.07)=.007, p=0.001. Exploratory Factor Analysis on post-test results revealed a 3 factor solution. The third factor differed from the pre-test factor solution. The pre-test factor of “support of healthy behavior from significant others is important” was replaced with “awareness of risk behaviors to healthy lifestyle.” The intervention program brought to light the importance of social support on affecting healthy lifestyle changes in an individual. The emergence of an “awareness of risk behaviors to healthy lifestyle” factor indicates that the study population recognizes risk factors as an important component in the process of moving toward a healthy lifestyle.