Advocating healthy lifestyles in the workplace can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in staff and in their families, a new study from India indicates. Such interventions cost only about $7.30 (£4.60; €5.30) per person per year, it says.

The ripple effect seen in a large intervention study on cardiovascular disease refutes concerns in medical circles that workplace initiatives relating to health are ineffective or too expensive to pursue, the investigators say.

The researchers, from the Public Health Foundation of India, the Centre for Chronic Disease Control in New Delhi, and other institutions selected five workplaces representing various industry sectors and one agricultural workplace for the intervention. Each workplace provided educational material on healthy …