Studies on work-related musculoskeletal symptoms (WRMSs) have been conducted mainly on different types of workforce but not many on low-skilled workers. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary exercise program in decreasing the number of body parts with WRMSs for low-skilled workers. This study used a repeated-measures, single-group design. One hundred and five (105) workers participated in eight weekly 90-min sessions (including 45-min workshops and 45-min exercises) in low-income community settings. The exercise program involved a 21-movement stretching exercise and a 10-movement muscle-strengthening exercise. Questionnaire and health-assessment data were collected at the baseline (N = 105) and immediately after the 8-week program (n = 86). The average age of the 105 participants was 50.5 ± 8.7 years (ranging from 31 to 67). Over 80% (n = 87) of them were female, 68.6% (n = 72) were married, and 68.6% (n = 72) had completed secondary school. They reported an average of three body parts with WRMSs at baseline (T0). By the end of the eight weeks (T1), the participants had reduced the number of WRMS-affected body parts, job stress, and incidences of working through pain, and had improved spine flexibility and handgrip strength. The factors significantly affecting the reduction in the number of body parts with WRMSs were change in the workstyle of working through pain, and self-rated health status. Our study has demonstrated that a community-based multidisciplinary program can reduce the number of body parts affected by WRMSs in low-skilled workers in low-income communities.

People with mental health needs are often reluctant to seek help due to inaccessibility to service and also stigmatization, especially in Chinese societies. However, professional effort to identify the high-risk people is inadequate. In this paper the authors described a five-year community-based outreaching project, which aimed at identifying the high-risk groups in seven deprived and lowincome communities territory wide and linking them up with mental health and social services. We assessed the project outcome by analysing the data (total number = 2181 participants) gathered on-site using the 20-item Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). The results of our analysis have shown that the project had successfully identified the high-risk groups (20.6%), with the following profile: the unemployed, housewife, the widowed and divorced and people with low education. They were referred to different services. The results of the post-intervention have indicated improved mental well-being of the participants who had received the services referred (n = 43). Our positive experience has confirmed the need of social workers to take an active role to reach out the unreachable, rather than be passive waiting them to come in.