A new paper recently co-authored by Dr. Tro Kalayjian, DO, found that employees who participated in an employer-sponsored metabolic health program lost weight, reduced their a1c, reduced the need for medications, and significantly improved their cardiac risk.
Published September 9, 2022 in Metabolites, an open-access Journal, the report is entitled “A Company Is Only as Healthy as Its Workers: A 6-Month Metabolic Health Management Pilot Program Improves Employee Health and Contributes to Cost Savings.” The report demonstrates the 6-month results from an ongoing metabolic-health focused, employee-wellness program between a large, self-insured corporation and Dr. Tro’s clinic. The conclusion states that improvements were noted “in HbA1c, fasting glucose, HOMA-IR, triglycerides, C-reactive protein, and systolic blood pressure were also observed across the group. Furthermore, the 10-year risk of having a major cardiovascular event, as calculated by the American Heart Association risk calculator, decreased from a mean of 9.22 to 5.18%, representing a 44% relative risk reduction.” Besides the metabolic benefits the paper notes, “As a result of improvements in their metabolic health, patients were able to discontinue medications, leading to an estimated annualized cost savings of USD $45,171.70. These preliminary data provide proof-of-principle that when companies invest in the metabolic health of their workers, both parties stand to gain.” The paper also emphasizes that the findings are early-stage and not generalizable. The other authors include Dr. Nicholas Norwitz & Dr. Adrian Soto-Mota.
The patients from this retrospective review had all presented to Dr. Tro’s clinic through a voluntary employee wellness program set up through a large, self-insured corporation. This corporation has several initiatives to promote employee health and well-being, including gyms, trainers, and employee health clinics. Dr. Tro’s metabolic wellness program was added in addition to the arsenal of services available to patients.
“The results were absolutely amazing,” says Dr. Tro. “We knew we can have an impact on highly motivated people coming directly to our clinic, but we didn’t know if we could systematically improve large groups. What this review tells us is that we are changing lives. Most importantly, these patient’s improved their heart health using the very metric promoted by the AHA/ACC. As a group these patients reduced their relative cardiac risk by about 45%, this is more powerful than some of our best medications.”
“This is some great early data that may be able to guide further research and potentially change the corporate landscape. This project was a win-win-win” said Dr. Tro. “The patients and their families improved their health, our clinic fulfilled our mission to reverse obesity and type 2 diabetes and the corporation was able to continue on it’s goals to improve employee health. I’d like to thank my co-authors, mentors, friends and family, but above all, I’d like to thank my patients.”
Article Information:
Link: https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1989/12/9/848
PDF: https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1989/12/9/848/pdf?version=1662717868
Video Discussion: https://youtu.be/RfZeFKjY38E
