Given that most adults spend many of their waking hours at work, worksites are seen as a potentially useful place to encourage employees to promote oral health. Worksites may include interventions focused on the individual, the physical environment (e.g., availability of foods and drinks without sugar in vending machines), or changes in policies to support access (e.g., dental insurance). Some worksite programs or policies have been offered by management and others have been developed jointly through labor/management negotiations. There are also interventions that have been developed to build support for employees and their families (e.g., education about oral health).
In developing your intervention, it is important to consider the feasibility of engaging in these various strategies and to consider alternatives as appropriate. For example, many small businesses find it useful and cost effective to work with existing community programs to support employees or their families with oral health education off-site. It is also important that the opportunities created are flexible enough to meet the needs of a wide variety of employees.
Previous work in worksite-based settings has found: