Objective
To determine: (1) What research has been done on health promotion interventions for low-wage workers and (2) What factors are associated with effective low-wage workers’ health promotion.
Data Source
This review includes articles from PubMed and PsychINFO published in or before July 2016
Study Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria
The search yielded 130 unique articles, 35 met the inclusion criteria: (1) being conducted in the US, (2) including an intervention or empirical data around health promotion among adult low-wage workers, and (3) measuring changes in low-wage worker health.
Data Extraction
Central features of the selected studies were extracted, including the theoretical foundation, study design, health promotion intervention content and delivery format, intervention targeted outcomes, sample characteristics, and work, occupational, and industry characteristics.
Data Analysis
Consistent with a scoping review, we used a descriptive, content analysis approach to analyze extracted data. All authors agreed upon emergent themes and two authors independently coded data extracted from each article.
Results
The results suggest that the research on low-wage workers’ health promotion is limited, but increasing, and that low-wage workers have limited access to and utilization of worksite health promotion programs.
Conclusions
Workplace health promotion programs could have a positive effect on low-wage workers, but more work is needed to understand how to expand access, what drives participation and which delivery mechanisms are most effective.
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