J Occup Environ Med. 2006; In press.
The impact of body mass index on short term disability in the workplaceArena VC, Padiyar KR, Burton WN, Schwerha JJObjective: To assess the association between body mass index and short term disability in a working “white collar” population. Methods: Cross-sectional data from 19,061 health risk appraisals (HRA) completed by employees of a large financial services corporation from 2000-2002. The self reported information for demographics, job characteristics, and job satisfaction was combined with detailed information from short term disability events (STD) taken during the same time period. Results: After adjusting for multiple covariates, body mass index (BMI) is an independent predictor for STD events. BMI categories of overweight and obese have odds ratios of 1.26 and 1.76 compared to normal weight (p<0.0001). Conclusions: The improvement of employee health and wellness should be pursued by the employer in an effort to promote healthier weight among their workers. This in turn should reduce STD events that result in the loss of worker productivity and a major cost to companies.Keywords: body mass index; obesity; short term disability, productivity Department of Biostatistics, Graduate School of Public Health, University
of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, USA.
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