“It raised my awareness of my own well-being,” says Stamplecoskie, who is with the 41 Division of the Toronto Police Service, an 8,000-person organization that operates 24/7 and includes everyone from front-line uniformed officers to civilians working in court and traffic services. “Th is was a golden opportunity.”
Stamplecoskie is one of 510 employees who participated in the cardiometabolic program. Designed by Connex Health, a workplace health consulting fi rm in Burlington, Ont., and pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis, the program assessed participants’ cardiometabolic risk factors, a set of conditions—core obesity (being apple-shaped), borderline hypertension and insulin-resistance—that together increase a person’s risk of diabetes and heart disease. The program also measured the impact of nutrition and fitness counselling on participants’ cardiometabolic health.
Workplace wellness has always been a part of Toronto Police Service. Police work is a stressful and physically demanding job. The use of force is sometimes necessary when making arrests, requiring police officers to be in top physical condition. Policing is also shift work, a well-documented source of stress, sleep disorders and ill health. So when Sanofi-Aventis approached Toronto Police Service with the idea for the pilot program, it took advantage of the opportunity. Connex Health, which had previously worked with the Service on other wellness initiatives, agreed to organize and run the program.
How it worked
During the initial hour-long clinics, employees filled out a questionnaire about family history of illness, tobacco use, physical activity and eating habits. They also gave a small blood sample, which was tested for glucose and cholesterol (triglycerides, LDL and HDL), and had their percentage of body fat, waist circumference, blood pressure and waist-to-hip ratio measured.
With participants spread out over 11 locations and several shifts, scheduling the clinics was a challenge. One clinic started at 4:30 a.m.
“Once it was determined we’d have to go through some of the divisions five times to capture all shifts, the greater challenge became allocation of resources,” says Connex’s Leah VanOoyen, manager of workplace health and wellness, who works with companies to implement, organize and manage wellness initiatives. “We’d have to go out to a clinic five times and maybe only capture 10 or 12 people each time, but we’d still have to bring four bins of equipment. It took us an hour to set up. It was definitely a budget challenge trying to capture everyone across 11 locations.”
Once everyone’s health data was collected, a lifestyle coach reviewed the results and in one-on-one consultations provided participants with resources and information on how to improve their lifestyle and eating habits. Over the next six to eight months, participants took part in nutrition and fitness counselling. The nutrition program involved maintaining a food diary, taking vitamin and mineral supplements and eliminating consumption of processed foods.
The fitness program involved weightlifting, walking and low-impact aerobics, which were all done on-site. While most participants exercised during lunch, they had the option to work out during business hours. (Allowing police officers to exercise on company time is up to their unit commanders, but Kim McClelland, the Service’s wellness coordinator, thinks it should be a company-wide policy. “If you require police officers to be fit [they should be able to] work out as much as they want,” she says.)
The results
Around six months later, participants returned to have their measurements taken again (of 510 participants, 171 returned—a good turnout for a police service, considering the unpredictable nature of police shift work, says McClelland). The results were impressive:
• a 13.5% reduction in certain participants’ risk of developing coronary heart disease
• a 23% increase in the number of participants with one or no cardiometabolic risk factors
• a 39% reduction in the number of participants with four or more cardiometabolic risk factors
• a 12% reduction in the number of people with an unhealthy waist circumference
• a 30% reduction in the number of people with a low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad” cholesterol) value of less than 3.0 mmol/L
• a 16.5% increase in the number of participants with healthy levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or “good” cholesterol)
• twenty-six new diagnoses of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and/or obesity, resulting in 17 new prescriptions for medications
• an increase in the number of participants who regularly meet the daily recommended servings of all food groups, except meat and alternatives
McClelland says the biggest success of the cardiometabolic program—aside from the positive impact on employees’ health— was the willingness of senior management to allow the clinics and subsequent programming to be held during work hours. Doing so “gave a very clear message to all employees that the command was committed to wellness and their well-being,” she says.
Toronto Police Service is working towards accreditation as a healthy workplace by the National Quality Institute (NQI) and has achieved level one of four so far. Next year, the Service plans to focus on fatigue management and sleep disorders.
Success stories Diana Tuccillo knows all too well about weight issues. A traffic court clerk with the Toronto Police Service for the past four years, the 29-year-old noticed her weight creeping up. Since participating in the nutrition counselling portion of the cardiometabolic program (which comprised a series of educational sessions taught by a certified holistic nutritionist), she’s lost 30 pounds and her percentage of body fat dropped from 27% to 18%. Her good cholesterol went up, while her blood sugar went down. She has more energy and believes her productivity has increased. “I’m extremely grateful [to my employer],” she says. “I would not have gone to a nutritionist by myself.” Cynthia Rennie is a senior fingerprint technician with the Toronto Police Service, who lost 80 pounds on her own in 1980. With the help of Weight Watchers, she’s since lost another 20 pounds. While Weight Watchers was not part of the cardiometabolic program, Rennie credits the nutrition component of the program with helping her stay on track and maintain her weight loss. Although she considers herself knowledgeable about nutrition thanks to her significant weight loss, she says it was good to get credible information from another source. She no longer works through her breaks, having realized the importance of getting up and moving. |
Why do wellness? Christine Bortkiewicz, manager of occupational health and safety, Toronto Police Service, recalls how employee health really became a priority in the late ’90s. “At the time, all of industry was [experiencing] a huge rise in drug costs,” she says. “Everyone was looking for strategies to mitigate those costs. I wouldn’t say we were any different—that was probably one of the drivers. At the same time, we’ve always had a culture where attendance was important. When a police officer goes down, we can’t call a temp agency to fill that position—the other workers have to work twice as hard to cover [the officer].” In 2002, Toronto Police Service hired Kim McClelland as its full-time wellness coordinator. The Service later used pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline’s Health Evidence model to determine where it was spending most of its healthcare dollars. It turned out the Service was spending the most money on cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stress and cardiometabolic disease. Three years later, the Service conducted a health-risk assessment (HRA) on its employee population and identified nutrition, sleep disorders, stress and work-life balance as areas of concern. “The real area that convinced senior command was the health-risk assessment,” says McClelland. “When they were presented with the results of the HRA survey, that’s what really kick-started the whole [wellness] program.” With an awareness of workplace wellness already in place, convincing senior command of the value of a cardiometabolic pilot program, introduced last year, was not hard at all. The program simply took the Toronto Police Service’s wellness strategy to the next level. “Each year we’ve done different programs,” says McClelland. “We’ve been doing cardiometabolic [programming] for several years now, but the Sanofi-Aventis program was a much more comprehensive, big-hit kind of cardiometabolic testing.” |
Andrea Davis is a freelance writer in Guelph, Ont.
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