ARLINGTON, Va. – Over the past year, about 1,500 Safeway employees have discovered through a regimen of free health tests offered by the chain that they had “uncontrolled hypertension,” said Christy Consler, vice president of sustainability for Safeway, Pleasanton, Calif.
“They were coming to work not feeling very good or there may have been absenteeism,” Consler said yesterday during a panel discussion on the link between health and wellness and sustainability at the FMI/GMA Sustainability Summit here. “But these were 1,500 people able to do something about it.”
In a program called “Healthy Measures,” Safeway offers employees tests of blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose, and body mass. The chain gives discounts to employees for being in healthy ranges – or support to get to those levels. “We took 6% of people who were overweight or obese and shifted them to a healthy range,” said Consler.
