Relationship between low evaluation by recipients under 40 years old of health interviews by occupational health nurses and deterioration in health checkup results over one year.

Improvement of an unhealthy lifestyle decreases the risk of incidence and mortality from lifestyle-related disease. One method for the improvement of an unhealthy lifestyle is interviewing for health and consultation regarding a healthy lifestyle to recipients of health checkups by public health nurses. Original articles in occupational health for recipients' evaluation in health checkups as longitudinal studies are rare. The purpose of the present study was to investigate in a longitudinal study the relationship between recipients' evaluation of interviews by public health nurses in a health checkup and variations in health checkup results for one year. Data on 750 male white collar workers who underwent a company health checkup in 1999 and 2000 were analyzed. The variation in health checkup results for one year from 1999 to 2000 was studied by computing odds ratios in a conditional logistic analysis of the recipients who set a low value on the interview for health by occupational health nurses in the health checkup in 1999 and those who did not. It was found that among the subjects who set a low value on the usefulness of the interview by the occupational health nurses, the numbers of the subjects whose body mass index (BMI) and triglyceride value (TG) were healthy (normal) in 1999 and unhealthy (abnormal) in 2000 were significantly greater than those of the subjects whose values were unhealthy in 1999 and healthy in 2000, while such a finding was not detected in the subjects who set a high value on the interview. The differences for BMI and TG between (i) differences between deterioration and improvement of health checkup results in the subjects who evaluated the interview lowly and (ii) those in the subjects who did not were statistically significant as interactions. It can be supposed that some of the subjects who set a low value on the usefulness of the interview by the occupational health nurses may be indifferent to their health status, indicating that low recipient evaluation of the interview for health in health checkup may be regarded as a risk factor of metabolic syndrome from the viewpoint of prevention.