“It’s an epidemic and clearly one of the worst industrial medicine disasters that’s ever been described… Thousands of cases of the most severe form of black lung. And we’re not done counting yet.”
— Scott Laney, epidemiologist, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, quoted by NPR.
A gut-wrenching expose about coal miners and black lung disease warrants a special position as Number 11 on my list ofTop 10 Employee Wellness Stories of 2018.
NPR andFrontlinerecently introduced findings from a multi-year investigation, reviewing data going back 20 years.
It’s too much detail to share here, but to get up to speed, you can: Continue reading »
California mandates that publicly traded companies based in the state have a minimum of one woman on their boards of directors by the end of 2019. If the new regulation survives anticipated legal challenges, representation will increase: By the end of July 2021, companies have to have at least 2 women on boards of 5 members; at least 3 women on larger boards.
If states can require corporations to place women on their boards, how far are we from Continue reading »
In 2018 aHuffington Post article,Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong, went viral, debunking myths about obesity and weight loss. It argued that the “war against obesity” has really been a war against obese people, fostering a culture that encourages fat shaming and alienates overweight people.
2 Slices of Bacon Daily Shortens Life by a Decade?
An article by Stanford’s John Ioannidis, whichcalled for radical reform of nutritional research and went viral in research circles, argues that most studies tying nutrients to health outcomes are bunk.
Ioannidis illustrates his point by describing the real-life implications were we to assume studies of individual foods are legit:
…eating 12 hazelnuts daily would prolong life by 12 years (ie, 1 year per hazelnut), drinking 3 cups of coffee daily would achieve a gain of 12 years, and eating a single mandarin orange daily would add 5 years of life. Conversely, consuming 1 egg daily would reduce life expectancy by 6 years, and eating 2 slices of bacon daily would shorten life by a decade, an effect worse than smoking. Could these results possibly be true?
Ioannidis blames researchers’ failure to properly account for confounding factors:
Relatively uncommon chemicals within food…may be influential. Risk-conferring nutritional combinations may vary by an individual’s genetic background, metabolic profile, age, or environmental exposures. Disentangling the potential influence on health outcomes of a single dietary component from these other variables is challenging, if not impossible.
He also blames selective publication of studies that proclaim a correlation between a food and a health outcome over studies that show no correlation. And he throws shade on nutrition advocates…
Expert-driven guidelines shaped by advocates dictate what primary studiesshouldreport.
Ioannidis didn’t even dig into the type of academic misconduct described in the first story on my Top 10 list, Mindless Cheating.
The Good News
But there’s a valuable learning — making this Number 9 on my list of Top 10 Wellness Stories of the year — we can take from all these stories. The lessons from Ioannidis’ article and Huffpo’s obesity article are essentially the same.
Pursuit of continuous improvement in the promotion of employee well-being demands skepticism.
We have to maintain idealism to believe we can do better. My New Year’s resolution is to cultivate even more optimism in the pursuit of measurable progress, knowledge, and improvement.
No amount of exercise will make a difference if you sit 8 hours a day.
The risks of trying to get all your exercise into one day per week outweigh the potential benefits.
Benefits of physical activity like better sleep, reduced anxiety, improved cognition, reduced blood pressure, and improved insulin sensitivity take weeks or even months to appear. You can’t expect immediate results.
If you answered “True” to any of these statements, and they are typical of the kind of advice your wellness program participants receive, it’s probably time to update your knowledge. Check out the 2nd edition of Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. Its release is 8th on my list of Top 10 Wellness Stories of 2018.
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Did you miss the full list of Top 10 Wellness Stories? They are:
We’re often advised not to compare our lives to what we see from our friends on Facebook and Instagram. The theory goes: People tend to expose on social media only the best, happiest facets of their lives, and comparing our own ordinary existence to the world-traveling, fancy-food-eating filtered glimpses we get of Continue reading »
A Willis Towers Watson survey identified musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) as a prioritized clinical focus for employers over the next three years, second only to metabolic syndrome and diabetes.
I do, indeed, anticipate that employers will have increasing interest in Continue reading »
This is the 5th in my Top 10 Wellness Stories of 2018.
Not long ago, I attended a panel discussion in which an audience member asked the panelists what their organizations were doing to address mental health. No one had anything to say other than, “We offer an EAP.” A wave of ick swept over the room as the tragedy of this truth dawned upon us — the panelists and the audience.
These readily make clear that countries like Canada, European Union members, and Australia are far ahead of the US in their action planning, and I’ve previously written about Japan’s aggressive approach.
Will the US learn from other countries and develop an evidence-based agenda to address mental health in the workplace (and beyond)?
I’m optimistic and predict that evidence-based solutions prevail.
Worldwide, a yearning for civility blossomed in 2018, and workplaces were no exception.
In addition toChristine Porath’spresentation at SHRM, civility surfaced on the agenda of major wellness conferences, and a prominent midwest health care system launched, withsome fanfare, an introductory “Choose Civility” e-course. Continue reading »
I’ve writtenad nauseamabout the University of Illinois Workplace Wellness Study, so allow me to just explain why I’m optimistic about where it’s heading.
This evaluation of an employer’s fledgling wellness program gave wellness critics a rationale to declare employee wellness a failure. The evaluation data, which showed almost no positive outcomes during the program’s startup, is only preliminary anddoesn’t say what critics say it says.
Even if you’ve never heard of Brian Wansink, you’ve probably been affected by his research.His studies,cited more than 20,000 times, are about how our environment shapes how we think about food, and what we end up consuming. He’s one of the reasons Big Food companies started offering smaller snack packaging, in 100 calorie portions. —Vox
Wansink led many headline-grabbing studies of eating behavior, showing, for example, that people eat less when food is served on smaller plates and that pre-ordering lunch leads to healthier choices. His work unleashed many employers’ nutritional wellness strategies, especially “making the healthy choice the easy choice.” Continue reading »
