Who participates in internet-based worksite weight loss programs?

A brief health survey (BHS) was administered, between January 2008 and November 2009, to employees at 19 worksites in Southwest Virginia. The BHS included demographic, behavioral, and health questions. All employees were blinded to the existence of a future weight loss program until the completion of the BHS.The BHS has a participation rate of 66 percent and the subsequent weight loss program has a participation rate of 30 percent. Employees from higher income households, with higher education levels and health literacy proficiency were significantly more likely to participate in the program (p's < .01).Worksite weight loss programs should include targeted marketing strategies to engage employees with lower income, education, and health literacy.A recent systematic review on the effectiveness of worksite nutrition and physical activity programs for reducing weight in overweight and obese employees found a consistent, but modest, effect of interventions on reductions in body weight (i.e., -2.8 pounds) and body mass index (BMI; i.e., -0.5 BMI) when compared to untreated controls [1]. These modest results could have a large public health impact if the intervention strategies could reach a large and representative or high risk sample of employees since the majority of adults spend a large amount of waking hours at work [2]. Unfortunately, few worksite health promotion studies reported on reach, [3] defined as the proportion of the eligible employee population that participated in a program and the representativeness of program participants compared to the eligible population [4]. Specifically, a review of worksite health prevention and intervention programs documented that only 25% of studies reported the proportion of eligible employees that agreed to participate in the study and only 9% reported on representativeness [3].The current state of worksite intervention studies led the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to conclude that there is a significant gap related to