Lindsey Davies on giving health messages clout

Russ Lidstone offers interesting food for thought for the NHS and for everyone interested in improving health. Marketing should be at the heart of public health and health and care services − and marketing isn’t just about providing information. It’s about changing people’s behaviour, including the way they use services.

It’s about understanding what people want and need, making sure that what is offered is acceptable and accessible. Change4Life was, with justification, admired in marketing circles, but information alone will not change behaviour.

‘Public health campaigns have also used, successfully, the multichannel approach that Lidstone advocates’

The NHS is generally well aware of this. Although it often struggles to get all the pieces of the jigsaw together at the right time, there are some notable exceptions − the multifaceted work on hospital infection control, for example.

Public health campaigns have also used, successfully, the multichannel approach that Lidstone advocates. The current media campaign on the immediate harm done by cigarettes focuses on how, for every 15 cigarettes smoked, there is a potentially cancer-causing mutation in the smoker. The television adverts have gone viral, with nearly three million YouTube views.

When I worked on the Department of Health’s swine flu awareness campaign, national advertising expertise, assisted by a commercial agency, was backed up with tailored, local messages promoted by NHS communications staff, local authorities, schools, charities and local media.

A word of caution

This was a successful partnership between the statutory, business and third sectors, based on mutual respect and benefiting from the contributions of each.

‘Improving health is often about changing long-term behaviour, which takes longer to measure than a Facebook “like” or retweet’

The NHS, with the help of its public health professionals, is skilled at assessing health needs and is becoming better all the time at working with partners to design comprehensive services. Unfortunately, however, the NHS’s approach to the communication and evaluation aspects of marketing has often been amateur and under-resourced. This has to change.

The challenges are enormous but so is the potential of new technology. A word of caution: although “gamification” may have a rapid impact on behaviour, we should not assume that this leads to sustained change. For example, the evidence suggests that prescriptions for exercise are not, on the whole, effective in producing long-term changes in health or behaviour. We need robust evidence on the role gaming and other approaches can play before applying them to large-scale campaigns.

There is a key role for the director of public health, working across the community to get the messaging right and coordinate every marketing step, from conception to evaluation.

But improving health and health services is often about changing long-term behaviour, which takes longer to measure than a Facebook “like” or retweet.

Lindsey Davies is president of the Faculty of Public Health