San Jose Fire Department Critique
OVERALL SELECTION TASK FORCE CRITERIA
FOR THE SAN JOSE CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT
This is a fine program which targets individual health improvement actions for firefighters, to reduce injuries, illness, and resultant costs, and to improve health knowledge. Fitness levels and performance toward the overall goal of improving quality of life is admirable. The addition of the personal trainer and the program inclusion of supporting clerical staff in the program is excellent. The internal studies of loss work days, hospitalization payments, medical payments, indemnity payments, and disability payments clearly demonstrate the financial impact of the wellness program. The graphic presentation is clear and compelling and participation rates are good, incentives are provided, and there are multiple year measurements over time in which participation increased from four percent to 70 percent. The program presents a model that can be emulated by other similar entities and some of these processes are going on.
Reviewer concerns were that the relationship of the good results to the program itself were not completely clear since many other engineering safety improvements were made. The return on investment was estimated and the evaluation design was not extremely strong. Thus the report is of the overall positive trend without perfect comparison or control group studies. Participant vs. non-participant analyses need to focus on similar people and this is not fully documented.
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