Affiliations:
Department of Occupational Therapy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
Address for correspondence: Hon K. Yuen, PhD., OTR/L, Professor & Director of Research, Department of Occupational Therapy, 354 School of Health Professions Building, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1705 University Boulevard, Birmingham, AL 35294-1212, USA. Tel.: +1 205 934 6301; Fax: +1 205 975 7787; E-mail: yuen@uab.edu.
Abstract: BACKGROUND:Employee wellness programs (EWPs) aim to support positive changes in employees’ modifiable behavioral health risk factors for disease prevention and management. OBJECTIVE:This study described the prevalence and characteristics of EWPs in US accredited college and university campuses. METHODS:Identification of the prevalence of EWPs and programming activities offered in 3039 accredited higher education institutions/campuses, and characteristics of these institutions/campuses were conducted, mainly through searching the institution’s web page. RESULTS:Overall, 36%of the institutions/campuses offered EWPs, with a significantly larger percentage of 4-year public colleges/universities providing EWPs and wellness programming activities than the 4-year private colleges/universities and community colleges. When limiting the institutions/campuses to 4-year colleges and universities with at least 500 employees, the percentage of these institutions/campuses offering EWPs increased to 57.7%, which was comparable to the findings in the literature. The percentage of the institutions/campuses offering wellness programming activities ranged from 18.1%for injury prevention and ergonomics to 30.2%for stress management. The percentage of institutions/campuses offering injury prevention and ergonomics was significantly lower than the percentage of institutions/campuses offering other typical wellness activities. CONCLUSIONS:The prevalence of EWPs offered in accredited college and university campuses do not meet the national goal of 75%, which was set by Healthy People 2010.
Keywords: Workplace health promotion, cross-sectional survey, universities, health promotion, statistics, numerical data
DOI: 10.3233/WOR-213435
Journal: Work, vol. 68, no. 4, pp. 1049-1057, 2021
