Improving low-wage, midsized employers' health promotion practices: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: The Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide) offers evidence-based intervention strategies to prevent chronic disease. The American Cancer Society (ACS) and the University of Washington Health Promotion Research Center co-developed ACS Workplace Solutions (WPS) to improve workplaces' implementation of Community Guide strategies.

Purpose: To test the effectiveness of WPS for midsized employers in low-wage industries.

A framework for disseminating evidence-based health promotion practices.

Wider adoption of evidence-based, health promotion practices depends on developing and testing effective dissemination approaches. To assist in developing these approaches, we created a practical framework drawn from the literature on dissemination and our experiences disseminating evidence-based practices. The main elements of our framework are 1) a close partnership between researchers and a disseminating organization that takes ownership of the dissemination process and 2) use of social marketing principles to work closely with potential user organizations.

Workplace health promotion in Washington State.

The workplace is a powerful setting to reach large numbers of at-risk adults with effective chronic disease prevention programs. Missed preventive care is a particular problem for workers with low income and no health insurance. The costs of chronic diseases among workers--including health care costs, productivity losses, and employee turnover--have prompted employers to seek health promotion interventions that are both effective and cost-effective.

The resilience of the health care safety net, 1996-2001.

Objective: To determine how the capacity and viability of local health care safety nets changed over the last six years and to draw lessons from these changes.

Data Source: The first three rounds (May 1996 to March 2001) of Community Tracking Study site visits to 12 communities.

Study Design: Researchers visited the study communities every two years to interview leaders of local health care systems about changes in the organization, delivery, and financing of health care and the impact of these changes on people.