Obesity in the workplace: Development of a conceptual framework

Obesity is a major health problem, which is associated with multiple adverse health outcomes such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke. In addition to health consequences, obesity also may affect productivity in the workplace. Previous research has associated obesity with a number of ergonomic risk factors or concerns including: Decreases in productivity and increases in workplace injuries, job stress, absenteeism, health service needs, and insurance costs. There are a wide range of psychosocial, socioeconomic, personal and economic factors contributing to obesity. Therefore, finding promising techniques for effective investigation of obesity is a challenge. The focus of this research is to identify work system variables that are associated with obesity and propose a conceptual framework to use data mining and agent based modeling to better understand this problem and ultimately to design effective interventions to deal with this issue and its impact on the work environment.