OBESITY

The relationship of frequently calling offs, taking excessive sick-leave, Obesity and productivity in corporate America

The relationship of frequently calling offs, taking excessive sick-leave, Obesity and productivity in corporate America

Introduction

Living healthy is one of the main concerns of the entire world. Public health is the discipline concerned with the protection of health at the population level. It aims to improve the health of the population and control and eradication of the disease. It is a science, multidisciplinary, and using the knowledge of other branches of knowledge such as science Biological, Behavioral, and Social Health. It is one of the pillars in the training of all health care professional (Zhu, 2006). Public health efforts are directed to the sanitary control of the environment in its broadest sense, with control of pollution of soil, water, air, of food and resources. It also includes social security to detect risk factors for developing population and health programs for the society. Provide alternative solutions to diseases involving any population.

Obesity

Obesity is commonly defined as severely overweight. This verbal definition is complemented by a quantitative specification of the boundaries between underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obesity. The World Health Organization (WHO) and most experts in this field refer to the body mass index (BMI) as a simple indicator relating the weight of an individual to his or her height. BMI is defined as the weight in kilograms (w), divided by the square of height (h) in meters (kg/m2). To give an example in both standard and metric units: An adult who weighs 170 pounds (77 kg) and whose height is 6 feet (1.828 m) will have a BMI of 23.0: BMI = 77 kg/ (1.828 m)2 = 77/3.341584 = 23.0 kg/m2.

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship of frequently calling offs, taking excessive sick-leave, Obesity and productivity in corporate America. This paper shows, through an overview of the current literature, how and where obesity is impacting on the workplace and how the health of the workforce is being affected also assessing the impact caused by the presence of certain co morbidities (diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia) to support the implementation of a program of prevention, screening and treatment of obesity, which will directly benefit the working population (Thompson, 2008).

Overweight and obesity have become key challenges for public health. Recent data show that 61% of adults in the Unites States are overweight (have a body mass index > 25) and 34% are obese (body mass index > 30, according to the Office of the Surgeon General, 2009). Canada and the United Kingdom show lower levels of obesity (about a quarter of adults are obese), but the long-term trend is similar and visible not only in developed but also developing countries: A growing number of children, youngsters, and adults are overweight. As a result, of that trend, public communication on this issue has increased in the last years. Policymakers have coined the term obesity epidemic to label the associated challenge in a simple, illustrative, but at the same time ...