Organisationen, ledaren, individen: vem ansvarar för hälsan? En kvalitativ studie om det hälsofrämjande och ohälsoförebyggande personalarbetet i Malmö stads stadsdelar.

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study was to examine health promotion and ill-health prevention in the workplaces of the City District Committees in the City of Malmö. More specifically, we wanted to find what types of health problems there were and what kinds of strategies were applied to prevent them. Furthermore, the aim was to examine whether the leaders of the City of Malmö saw any effects of the strategies in use and if so, which. Finally, the intention was to compare our empirical results to previous research in the field of health promotion and ill-health prevention in workplaces. We conducted a qualitative study consisting of semi-structured interviews with five leaders in different levels, two personnel secretaries, two employees assigned to improve the health of the personnel in the City Districts, and one safety representative. The empirics was analysed based on previous research and three perspectives: Demand-Control-Support, Person-Environment Fit, and the Corporate Culture Health Transaction Model. We found that the main health problems, estimated by the respondents, were: repetition strain injuries, common colds, and psychosocial problems. The health promoting investments, most frequently used by the City Districts, was subsidized health maintaining and health improving activities, and the offer to exercise during working hours. The higher level leaders knew little about what outcomes the investments had, whereas the low level leaders could see healthy improvements in their staff's lifestyles since introducing the programs. However, they could not say for certain if these effects were due to the health promoting investments or to something else since no evaluations had been conducted. We found that the low level leaders could, and did, do much to promote the psychological health of the co-workers by how they practiced their leadership. Most importantly, we found that the empirics and the previous research unanimously emphasised that the low level leaders play an important role in the outcome of the promotion of the employee's health. The respondents considered, however, that the utter responsibility for an individual's health lies on the individual herself.