Comprehensive healthy workplace strategy in Taiwan

Background and Purpose: A nationwide workplace health promotion (WHP) program has been implemented in Taiwan since 2006 with aims to increase the awareness of healthy workplace and establish a comprehensive model of WHP. Methods: Three healthy workplace promoting centers (HWPC) were funded by the Bureau of Health Promotion (BHP), Department of Health in Taiwan to implement the WHP with 5 major tasks. They are: providing consultation services for enterprises; conducting seed personnel training courses for local health agencies and enterprises; developing the education tools; holding a self-certification activity annually, and conducting annual nationwide survey which in terms will be the base for future promotion and adjustment for the program. We focused on tobacco control at the beginning of this program and broadened the approaches to all aspects of health promotion. Results: The significant achievements included (1) initiating a ban on smoking in indoor workplace in January 2009; (2) reducing workers' smoking rate (24.2% vs. 17.3%) as well as environmental tobacco smoke in worksites (29.9% vs. 15.7%) significantly from 2004 to 2010; (3) establishing an award system to recognize achievements in becoming a healthy workplace, with a total of 5,391 enterprises being recognized as partial to total health promoting workplace during 2007~ 2010.Conclusions:We gained a successful experience from tobacco control program to a comprehensive WHP through the application of the Ottawa Charter on Health Promotion. Furthermore, the ongoing promotion and improvement based on the WHO 2010 Healthy Workplace Model will be integrated.