Employees may benefit from an improvement in their basic health condition, if an email-based intervention program is tailored for each individual, a new study conducted by US researchers proves. The new investigation was conducted by the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, and is currently detailed in the latest issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The research was conducted on 787 Kaiser Permanente Northern California employees, via a randomized controlled trial of the ALIVE (A Lifestyle Intervention Via E-mail) program.

During the experiments, 351 employees were unknowingly assigned to the study group, whereas the remaining 436 were randomized into a control one. The people in the fomer received only an email reminder at the beginning of the study, containing the evaluation results they scored for a list of questions they received. The questionnaires were aimed at determining whether their reported levels of physical exercise or their diets met national standards or not.

On the other hand, people in the study group received weekly emails in their inboxes, containing little tips on how to improve their health, and on how to eat more healthy as well. The experts suggested small, practical, individually tailored goals, including walking for ten minutes during the lunch break, strolling to the store rather than driving, eating more fruits or vegetables, and so on. The emails were non-intrusive, but they were, in fact, “custom-made” for each of the participants.

The results revealed that, while after the study was done people in the control group showed no change in their condition, those in the study group spent as much as one extra hour per week exercising, while also refraining from watching TV or other sedentary activities for more than two hours per week, on average. They also consumed more vegetables and fruits, and were in a better overall state of health. The effects of the intervention lasted for several months, as a follow-up test revealed.

“The takeaway message here for people who want to improve their diet and physical activity, and for employers who want a healthier workforce, is that e-mail intervention programs are a very cost-effective way to get healthy. A tailored e-mail program includes all the things that behavioral scientists have said for years about changing behavior: small goals tailored for the individual, reinforcement, and tracking but delivered in a mass, cost-effective way,” Kaiser Permanente Division of Research senior research scientist Barbara Sternfeld, PhD, who has also been the lead investigator of the new study, explained.

“Using e-mail to get people active is a great use of existing technology that is cheap and readily available. Anything we can do to increase activity level is going to improve health because we know that exercise is medicine. It's medicine you can take to live a longer and healthier life,” the former President of the American College of Sports Medicine, Bob Sallis, MD, who is also a Kaiser Permanente family physician, concluded.