Health of the corporate worker: health risk assessment among staff of a corporate organization in Ghana

INTRODUCTION Health promotion at the workplace and for workers is important to promote workers' health, improve working environments and work practices. The goal of this analysis was to provide an example of health risk assessment conducted in a large media organization in Ghana for its workers and to identify correlates of health risks identified among different categories of workers. METHODS This was a cross sectional study of the health risk of staff in a large corporate media organization in Accra, Ghana, conducted in 2012. In all 161 members of staff were screened and records included in the analysis. An abstraction form was used to collect data on age and sex of staff, staff category, self-reported health risk, history of chronic disease and self-rated health status. Measurements included weight, height, Body Mass Index, fasting blood sugar, total cholesterol/ HDL cholesterol and blood pressure. Data were entered into SPSS version 21, and analyzed by simple frequencies, proportions and ratios. Measured health indices were analyzed by mean ± standard deviation. Significant association between categorical outcome measures were determined with chi-square test at the 95 % confidence level. RESULTS The sex characteristics of the workers indicated more males than females, male: female sex ratio of 2.3: 1. Close to half of the workers 66 (41.0 %) self-reported history of chronic disease and 40 (24.8 %) self-rated their overall state of health as poor. In all, 31.7 % of workers self-reported hypertension, while measured blood pressure indicated 60.2 % prevalence of diastolic blood pressure. Prevalence of obesity was 63.8 %; 49.1 % of staff had above normal total cholesterol levels and 12.4 % had blood glucose indicative of diabetes. Senior and management staff had relatively higher prevalence of obesity, high blood pressure, above normal cholesterol and fasting blood sugar levels. CONCLUSION More staff were unaware of their individual health risks and the health risks were higher among senior staff and management members. Adoption of regular health educational and health promotion activities as well as health surveillance procedures is essential to improve health of workers and promote positive social climate at the work place.