An inexpensive workplace initiative to motivate high-risk individual health improvement

Abstract

Unhealthy lifestyles cost businesses, governmental organizations, and the U.S. military billions of dollars every year, not to mention intangible costs associated with increased mortality. This study implemented a low-cost cognitive-behavioral motivational intervention to effect behavioral change in high-risk civilian employees working for a U.S. military organization, with accompanying improvement in certain health indicators after 120 days compared with a control group. Our analysis of these results led to two conclusions: first, low-cost cognitive-behavioral motivational treatments can improve both behavior and health, and second, tentative results indicate a fully mediated relationship may exist among the cognitive variables of locus of control and self-efficacy, vice the predicted parallel relationship. Overall, we assert that effective implementation of an intervention like the one used in this study might lower the U.S. Air Force's health care bill by as much as $40 million, improve employee efficiency and mission capability, enable healthier lives, and prevent premature death.