Awareness About Cardiovascular Health for Construction Workers

Cardiovascular health issues may arise due to the demanding tasks required for construction work. Many construction workers also deal with long commutes, sleep deprivation, and have difficulty sticking to a workout routine, along with other unhealthy habits like smoking or vaping. Therefore, their risk of developing cardiovascular disease increases. 

Importance of Cardiovascular Health for Construction Workers

According to reports, almost 25% of construction workers use tobacco and almost half of them do not workout enough. A lot of construction workers also deal with other health issues like diabetes and obesity making it even more important to create a healthy workplace for your employees. Cardiovascular disease usually accompanies other health issues like diabetes and chronic musculoskeletal disorders. 

Cardiovascular disease can affect the quality and longevity of a worker’s life and cause problems for their families if it results in long-term disability or premature death. Employers and co-workers also have to deal with the human and financial consequences of cardiovascular disease impacting workers. They must deal with things like an increase in health care costs as well as finding a replacement for disabled or deceased employees.  

American Heart Association

The American Heart Association has a Hard Hats with Heart program to help spread awareness about cardiovascular health for construction workers. It is meant to help them better understand the risk factors as well. This initiative is actively spreading awareness about cardiovascular health in over two dozen cities in the US.

These are all the metro areas with the hard hats with hearts initiative;

What Employers Can Do

There are a lot of factors that contribute to these issues. However, there are certain things that employers can do to ensure that their workers live a healthy and long life. Construction businesses and industry leaders should take the necessary steps to properly educate their workers about cardiovascular disease and its prevention.

Demonstrate Commitment to Heart Health

As an organization, you should have CPR training in place, so the odds of survival increase if someone suddenly goes into cardiac arrest.  You should also consider providing automated external defibrillators at your worksite. By doing this, you will not only be able to demonstrate your commitment to heart health but also expedite resuscitation until the first responders show up. 

There are other things that you can do to promote heart health among your workers, such as providing heart healthy snacks in meetings and having healthy food options in vending machines. You can also start a warmup routine that emphasizes movement of big muscle groups instead of the good old flex and stretch routine. You should work just as hard to ensure the good health and safety of your workers as you would to maintain your CAT 950B wheel loader, because if your workers aren’t healthy you can forget about productivity. Make sure to include heart health and CVD prevention in your company’s health and safety program so your employees can understand its importance. Implementing a biometric health screening program can also be helpful toward that end.