Discussion
Sheltered and social workshops in Flanders (Belgium) employ people from disadvantaged groups who are less likely to be reached by mainstream HP interventions. Therefore, these companies might be a good channel to provide HP in disadvantaged people. In this study, the current status of HP interventions in these companies and factors related to the implementation were studied.
Companies can organize HP in different ways, but environmental and policy changes are seen as most effective and long-lasting [12, 15, 16]. In this study, almost 60 % of the workshops had an environmental or policy HP intervention implemented. Besides environmental and policy HP interventions, individual HP strategies can be used to increase the knowledge and positive attitudes concerning a healthy lifestyle, or to improve the self-efficacy to perform the healthy behaviour [23]. Workshops also invest in these strategies: 40 % gave individual guidance to their employees and one third organized educational group sessions.
In 2012, the Flemish Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention organized a survey on health indicators in general Flemish companies [24]. In their report, percentages of HP ranged from 15 % for nutritional topics to 40 % for tobacco interventions. Although they used other measurements to assess HP, our results indicate that workshops have almost equal or more attention to HP themes compared with normal economy companies. The daily confrontation with health-related problems of their employees, such as high sickness rates due to unhealthy lifestyle, and alcohol and tobacco dependency problems, can possibly have urged workshops to invest in HP.