Making workplaces smoke-free, displaying signs promoting physical activity, and offering healthy foods at meetings appears to encourage low-income, ethnically diverse workers to make healthy lifestyle changes that may reduce their risk of cancer, according to new study findings.

A group of Massachusetts researchers found that when workplaces adopted the intervention, workers tended to exercise, take multivitamins, eat more fruits and vegetables, and eat less red meat.

This pattern was only statistically significant for multivitamin use, meaning that the improvements seen in other health behaviors may have been due to chance, the authors caution.

Still, the findings suggest that programs can sway diverse groups of workers towards healthy habits. "It is possible to design an effective cancer prevention intervention that can work across cultural groups," study author Dr. Glorian Sorensen of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston told Reuters Health.

"It is important that worksite cancer prevention programs be effective for the diverse cultural groups included among their workforce," she added.

In the American Journal of Public Health, Sorensen and her team note that researchers have linked poor diet and lack of exercise to cancer and chronic disease. Ethnic minorities and people with low income are more likely than others to exhibit those unhealthy behaviors, the authors write, but interventions typically do not target these groups.

In response, Sorensen and her team followed workers at 26 worksites, half of whom received an intervention designed to help low-income, multicultural workers.

As part of the intervention, workplaces became smoke-free, posted signs promoting physical activity, served healthy foods at meetings, offered health fairs, and made sure all information was culturally sensitive, as well as heavily visual to include people with trouble reading.

At the end of the study, 21 percent of workers exposed to the intervention said they ate at least 5 daily servings of fruits and vegetables, compared only 14 percent of people at sites that did not receive the program. The corresponding proportions saying they took multivitamins at least 6 days per week were 37 percent versus 27 percent.

"We believe that our attention to the social context, the work environment and cultural issues made a difference in the impact of the intervention," Sorensen noted