Although the vast majority of Americans who are physically active are likely to extol its many physical, psychological, and social values, research indicates that approximately fifty percent of individuals who start a formal physical activity program will drop out in six months or less. The present study employed stepwise discriminant analytical techniques in an attempt to distinguish starters from nonstarters in an innovative employee physical activity incentive program. The results indicated that a combination of health beliefs and lifestyle characteristics, health locus of control expectancies, and physiological characteristics accurately discriminated 81.7% of the starters and nonstarters. It was concluded that physical activity programs need to be designed, implemented, and marketed in such a manner as to attract individuals who are sedentary, smoke, are unable to cope with home-mediated stress, have an external health locus of control expectancy, and/or have a high cardiovascular disease-risk factor profile.

Over the course of almost 10 years, 1988-97, there has been a significant decline in the number of United States and Canadian medical schools offering health promotion programmes for students. All efforts should be made to enhance the overall health and well-being of medical students and to increase the number of health promotion programmes for them.

Allopathic and osteopathic medical school health promotion programs for students were very similar in scope.

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Questionnaries with 22 multiple-choice questions were mailed to a random sample of 450 Missouri employers with 250 or more employees to determine the prevalence and types of workplace health promotion programs; 262 (58%) responded. Only 34% of the responding companies offered any kind of program and 65% of these offered only awareness programs, but most offered programs on all 18 topics listed in the questionnaire; 48% had a full-time program manager, 79% had some form of evaluation, and 36% had some form of financial incentives.