Implementation of Occupational Sun Safety at a 2-Year Follow-Up in a Randomized Trial: Comparison of Sun Safe Workplaces Policy Intervention to Attention Control
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online June, 2019
Implementation of Occupational Sun Safety at a 2-Year Follow-Up in a Randomized Trial: Comparison of Sun Safe Workplaces Policy Intervention to Attention Control
Implementation of employer sun safety actions was assessed in a 2-year follow-up to an occupational sun protection policy intervention.
Design:
Two-year follow-up assessment in a randomized pretest–posttest controlled design.
Setting:
Local government organizations with workers in public safety, public works, and parks and recreation.
Participants:
Sixty-three local government organizations (participation = 64%) and 330 frontline supervisors and 1454 workers.
Intervention:
Sun Safe Workplaces (SSW) intervention promoting occupational sun safety policy and education.
Measures:
Observations of SSW messages and sun safety items and surveys on organizations’ communication and actions on sun safety.
Analysis:
Comparison between SSW and control groups was conducted using regression models and adjusted for clustering where appropriate, with α criterion set at P = .05 (2-tailed).
Results:
At intervention worksites, more SSW messages (P < .001) and sun safety items (P = .025) were observed; more frontline supervisors reported organizations provided free/reduced price sunscreen (P = .005) and communicated about sun safety (P < .001); and more workers recalled receiving sun safety messages (P < .001) and sun safety training (P <.001) compared to control organizations. Implementation was greater at larger than smaller intervention organizations for wide-brimmed hats (P = .009), long work pants (P = .017), and shade structures (P = .036). Older workers received the most written messages (P = .015).
Conclusions:
Sun Safe Workplaces appeared to produce actions by organizations to support employee sun safety. Large organizations may have processes, communication channels, and slack resources to achieve more implementation.
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