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Background:Society faces multiple challenges, including lifestyle diseases and global climate change. Framing health education within sustainable development may enhance motivation for behavior change because proenvironmental behaviors, as well as healthy behaviors, often rely on the same behavior change principles. Combining these perspectives may therefore reinforce health behaviors and climate-friendly choices. Objective:This pilot study aims to explore changes in dietary intake, diet-related carbon footprint, and physical activity among office workers receiving sustainable plus healthy lifestyle (sustainable lifestyle arm) or healthy lifestyle education (healthy lifestyle arm) alone. It also aims to assess the feasibility of the intervention functions, including workshop attendance rate, participants' dietary goals, social support, and facilitators and barriers to behavior change. Methods:A 2-armed participant-blinded cluster randomized study, including an experimental intervention arm (sustainable lifestyle; n=19) and a control intervention arm (healthy lifestyle; n=14), was conducted in Sweden. The study lasted 8 weeks and included 6 workplace-based workshops and was framed by the behavioral change wheel and the socioecological model. Diet, carbon footprint, and physical activity were assessed using the web-based questionnaires Meal-Q and Active-Q. Attendance rate, individual goals, social support, and facilitators and barriers were assessed using printed questionnaires. Results:The reduction of total diet-related carbon dioxide equivalents (CO(2)e) was 0.8 kg and 0.4 kg per day for the sustainable and healthy lifestyle arm, respectively. Also, there was a statistically significant interaction between time and lifestyle when the carbon footprint was expressed as a qualitative aspect of diet, that is, CO(2)e kg per 1000 kcal per day (P=.05). Moreover, the intake of vitamin C, a marker for fruits and vegetables, increased to 8.0 and 12.5 mg per 1000 kcal per day for the sustainable and healthy lifestyle arms, respectively. In addition, total sedentary time decreased by 0.4 hours per day in the sustainable lifestyle arm, but not in the healthy lifestyle arm. This indicates that the educational workshops in respective arms had different impacts on health behavior over time. Minor differences were found in dietary goals, with the sustainable lifestyle arm setting more goals related to ecological and vegetarian foods. No differences were seen between arms regarding barriers or facilitators. Conclusions:This study suggests that embedding healthy lifestyle recommendations within a sustainable development context may be an efficient way to reduce carbon footprint and increase healthy behavior among office workers. Given the ongoing global epidemic of metabolic diseases, climate change, and environmental degradation, promoting a sustainable lifestyle in a workplace context has the potential to counteract these trends. Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06698094; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06698094

In numerous research disciplines, including epidemiology, it is common to compare different occupational categories, such as office workers and non-office workers. When only self-reported occupation titles are available, it is necessary to categorize individuals based on their self-reported titles. Thus, the possibility to identify office workers via self-reported occupation titles can enhance research on the health and well-being of office workers in large population-based epidemiological studies, even without specific questions about office work. This paper introduces data and R code that can be used to assign a proxy variable for office worker based on responses to an open-ended question (OEQ) about occupation in Swedish questionnaires. The proxy variable is based on the Swedish Standard Classification of Occupations 2012 (SSYK 2012), which includes 8946 occupation titles. Using a translation key, the titles have been categorized into three groups: managers, white-collar workers, and blue-collar workers. White-collar workers (including managers) are considered office workers, while blue-collar workers are classified as non-office workers. The proxy variable has been refined using pilot data from the Swedish population-based epidemiological resource LifeGene. The R code, together with the proxy variable, can be used in any dataset with a Swedish OEQ about occupation, facilitating the categorization of respondents as either white-collar or blue-collar workers and serving as a proxy variable for office worker. The R code can be used for OEQs regardless of language, provided there is a dataset with a standard classification of occupation in the desired language. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Employee surveys aim to assess employees' attitudes and work environments and offer a strategic approach to workplace improvement. However, in these surveys, areas related to health and lifestyle are often overlooked, despite their relevance to the wellbeing and performance of the employees. The aim of this scoping review was to examine the role of employee surveys in promoting physical health and healthy lifestyles among employees at the workplace.MethodsTo be eligible for inclusion, published articles needed to investigate employees' physical health or lifestyles and utilize employee survey data, be published in English within the last 10 years (2014-2024) and be available in full text in the databases ProQuest one business, Emerald Insight, PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus.Results1,550 studies were screened, and eight studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Of these, two studies assessed data at two time points to study change over time, and only one study aimed to influence behavior change of employees. This demonstrates a lack of evidence-based methods for linking employee surveys data to health promoting initiatives in a workplace context.ConclusionsThis scoping review highlights an urgent knowledge gap in the literature. Future research should explore the process of using employee surveys for identifying health related problems, designing and implementing solutions, follow-up improvements, and thereby creating a workplace health promoting loop process.RegistrationA study protocol has been preregistered on Open Science Framework with registration number xza4m.

Background: To enhance the usability of existing large population-based studies in epidemiologicresearch on office workers, we developed a procedure for a proxy variable on office worker in datawith open-ended responses on occupation.

Methods: Self-reported open answers on occupation (n=3738) from the LifeGene pilot study werelinked to a modified version of the Swedish Standard Classification of Occupation 2012 (SSYK12). TheSSYK12 includes 8946 job titles with 4-digit codes which were categorized to managers, white-collarand blue-collar workers. Managers and white-collar workers were used as a proxy for office workers.We then used fuzzy string matching in R to calculate the Jaro-Winkler distance between the LifeGenepilot data answers on occupation and the modified SSYK12 job titles. Zero distance indicated aperfect match, whereas distances above zero were checked manually to assess various job titles asoffice worker or non-office worker. Thereafter, the resulting procedure was applied to the wholeLifeGene study with data on occupation (n=23 525).

Results: We got perfect match against the modified SSYK12 job titles for 16 275 responses (69%) inthe large LifeGene data. Another 1721 responses (7%) matched occupations that we had manuallydefined as office worker or non-office worker in the pilot data set, and the remaining 5529 (24%)were unmatched. Among the matched occupations, 15 159 (84%) were office-workers, 2493 (14%)non-office workers, and 344 (2%) nondistinctive.

Conclusion: The procedure for a proxy variable on office worker allowed us to classify three quartersof the open-ended responses on occupation.

Background: Society is facing multiple challenges, including lifestyle- and age-related diseases of major public health relevance, and this is of particular importance when the general population, as well as the workforce, is getting older. In addition, we are facing global climate change due to extensive emissions of greenhouse gases and negative environmental effects. A lifestyle that promotes healthy life choices as well as climate and environmentally friendly decisions is considered a sustainable lifestyle. Objective: This study aims to evaluate if providing information about a sustainable lifestyle encourages individuals to adopt more nutritious dietary habits and increase physical activity, as compared to receiving information solely centered around health-related recommendations for dietary intake and physical activity by the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations and the World Health Organization. Novel features of this study include the use of the workplace as an arena for health promotion, particularly among office workers—a group known to be often sedentary at work and making up 60% of all employees in Sweden. Methods: The Sustainable Office Intervention (SOFIA) study is a 2-arm, participant-blinded, cluster randomized controlled trial that includes a multilevel sustainable lifestyle arm (intervention arm, n=19) and a healthy lifestyle arm (control arm, n=14). The eligibility criteria were being aged 18-65 years and doing office work ≥20 hours per week. Both intervention arms are embedded in the theoretically based behavioral change wheel method. The intervention study runs for approximately 8 weeks and contains 6 workshops. The study focuses on individual behavior change as well as environmental and policy features at an organizational level to facilitate or hinder a sustainable lifestyle at work. Through implementing a citizen science methodology within the trial, the participants (citizen scientists) collect data using the Stanford Our Voice Discovery Tool app and are involved in analyzing the data, formulating a list of potential actions to bring about feasible changes in the workplace. Results: Participant recruitment and data collection began in August 2022. As of June 2024, a total of 37 participants have been recruited. The results of the pilot phase are expected to be published in 2024 or 2025. Conclusions: Given the ongoing climate change, negative environmental effects, and the global epidemic of metabolic diseases, a sustainable lifestyle among office workers holds important potential to help in counteracting this trend. Thus, there is an urgent unmet need to test the impact of a sustainable lifestyle on food intake, physical activity, and environmental and climate impacts in a worksite-based randomized controlled trial. This study protocol responds to a societal need by addressing multilevel aspects, including individual behavior changes as well as environmental and organizational changes of importance for the successful implementation of sustainable lifestyle habits in an office setting. 

The socio ecological model states that individual behaviors at work are shaped by the interactions between individual employees and their work environments. This study used citizen science to gain insights into which elements of the built, social, and organizational environment in an office and surrounding neighborhoods in two Swedish cities were perceived as barriers to or facilitators of healthy and sustainable behaviors at work. Participants in the eight-week Sustainable Office Intervention pilot study (SOFIA) (n = 33) were cluster-randomized into an experimental arm (sustainable lifestyle) or a control intervention arm (healthy lifestyle). They used the Our Voice Healthy Neighborhood Discovery Tool mobile app to document contextual elements at their workplaces. In total, 114 photos and text-based narratives were recorded, and four themes emerged: built environment, building design, office ergonomics, and food and beverages. Eighteen percent of the photos were linked to pro-environmental behaviors, all exclusively captured by the experimental arm. Twelve barriers and solutions for improving the workplace environment were identified during discussions with participants in both arms. The findings provide insights for designing or renovating office spaces and urban planning to promote healthier and more sustainable lifestyles for office workers.