SMART Work & Life
People whose job primarily involves desk-based work spend a large proportion of their day sitting down at work in addition to sitting at home. High levels of sitting have been linked to several diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This makes office workers an ‘at-risk’ group who should be targeted for lifestyle intervention. We have designed an intervention called SMART Work & Life, which targets the time that office workers spend sitting both inside and outside of work, emphasising a ‘whole-of-day’ preventive approach.
SMART Work & Life involves multiple strategies to encourage a reduction in sitting time both in and out of the workplace, with some facilitated by workplace champions. Additionally, we will be delivering this intervention with and without the provision of a height adjustable workstation (allows the user to either stand or sit to work). This is important because although previous studies have achieved substantial reductions in workplace sitting, there are cost implications associated with these workstations. This study, through a 3-arm randomised controlled trial design, will enable us to evaluate the impact of the intervention both with and without these workstations. We will recruit ~700 people for this study and measure them at baseline and then 3, 12 and 24 months later. This study is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).