Effects of an individual-based weight loss intervention concurrent to an environmental intervention in a worksite setting

Per Healthy People 2010, an important setting for reducing obesity is the workplace, which has many nested levels (e.g., individual/worker, workgroup, organization, and external environment). LightenUP (LUP) is an intervention targeting workgroup and organization levels through moderate and intense environmental interventions at the worksite that found small but positive results for body mass index (BMI) and weight, but mixed results for other behavioral and biometric outcomes over 2 years. Since many LUP participants also participated in an individual-based weight loss intervention (YW8), this analysis examines whether the LUP results are attributable to the environmental intervention alone or in combination with YW8. Interestingly, those at the intense LUP intervention sites were less likely to participate in YW8 (58.8%, odds ratio (OR)=.600, p=.001) than their counterparts at the moderate LUP intervention sites (63.7%). At baseline, YW8 participants at intense sites were more educated, held more professional jobs, and had higher BMI than non-participants; however, no differences were found between YW8 participants and non-participants at moderate sites. At the intense sites, the prevalence of YW8 participants at risk for physical activity (β=-.644, p=.002) and stress (β=-1.226, p<.003) decreased over the 2 year period compared to non-participants. Unfortunately, the behavioral changes did not translate into the anticipated changes in weight-related outcomes. Though it does not appear that the concurrent individual-based intervention increased the effectiveness of the environmental intervention, further discussion of YW8 participants' engagement in the intervention and goal-setting behaviors will be explored as possible explanations for these results.