Patronage, civic engagement and health promotion

« At the beginning, we started with simple financial aid for the association Acting for the hearts of women (ACF) who travels across France in a bus to carry out assessment interviews and advice on cardiovascular health for women far from healthcare. However, 80% of our employees are women; why not make them aware of the subject? », explains Emmanuelle Merville, director of human resources at SYNLAB.

« The figures show us that cardiovascular risk is not taken into account enough for women. Every day, in France, 200 women die from cardiovascular disease, 33 from breast cancer, 2 from a road accident. Concerning the heart, 80% of these deaths could be avoided thanks to healthy lifestyle measures. », continues Florian Scherrer, medical director of SYNLAB. The network therefore began by distributing 4,000 information booklets designed by ACF, in addition to a webinar hosted by the P^re Claire Mounier-Verhier, cardiologist, and Thierry Drilhon, the co-founders of ACF. “ Faced with the enthusiasm, we decided to offer our employees, on a voluntary basis, a cardiovascular medical check-up. The interview being conducted by our own biologists and nurses », explains Florian Scherrer.

Success beyond expectations

« ACF made their protocol available to us, our teams used it to carry out assessments on their own colleagues. It was a great success! Biologists and nurses who take care of their colleagues, who take their time to look after their collaborators, this has reintroduced a lot of kindness and humanity within the teams. This also responded to a real need after the Covid episode, for all these teams who were focused on others during the 3 years of the crisis », describes the HR director with enthusiasm.

« We were far from imagining that so many SELs would take advantage of the system. Some have even opened it externally with special days. We were also very surprised by our teams’ appetite for even more medical information. We always think that, as they are biologists, nurses, secretaries or medical technicians, they are already well informed… », adds Florian Scherrer.

During the first wave, 11 out of 28 laboratories participated, 358 women from the network benefited from the assessment, i.e. a participation rate of 35% of female employees. 12 people were identified as high risk and did not yet have support; the opportunity for them to put in place the means to reduce their risks in the future. “ Given the success of this first wave, we will install this system over time and extend it with actions around nutrition, a major area of ​​prevention on this subject. », specifies Emmanuelle Merville. The great autonomy of laboratories within the SYNLAB network has also generated a multitude of local actions, such as opening these assessments to partners (staff of an Ephad, for example) or, to pursue the notion of taking care from each other, with the implementation of sporting activities “together”.