The social marketing imbroglio in health promotion

Author(s):  
Ralph C. Lefebvre
Author(s):  
Chi-Horng Liao

Health promotion campaigns are used to raise awareness about health issues with the purpose of improving health outcomes and community wellbeing. They are important for increasing community awareness of health behavior changes. In the application of health promotion, social marketing can be used to influence changes in individual behavior. Social marketing encourages the social behavioral change of the target audience. This social behavioral change refers to the behavior of a certain number of target audiences, not just individual behavior. This research identified various social marketing success criteria to improve the performance of health promotion using decision-making method. Fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (F-DEMATEL) is a structural causal relation method that has been verified effectual in congregating the viewpoints of professionals and thus providing information of greater reliability in various areas. F-DEMATEL method helps to identify the core problems and direction of improvement in complex systems by quantifying the degree to which criteria attributes interact with each other. This research applied F-DEMATEL to evaluate the complex interrelation success criteria of social marketing in order to effectively implement health promotion. Several effective criteria were derived from this research. These influential criteria are “Designing effective Communication message”, “Meeting the needs of beneficiaries”, “Providing more benefit than cost”, “Marketing mix elements”, “Customer orientation”, “Organizational advantage” and “Market selection”. The practitioner must consider the needs of the recipients to accomplish a successful social marketing campaign in health promotion. Moreover, the practitioner also has to design an attractive message and marketing mix strategy to communicate the benefits of the behavioral change to the target audience. Besides, the message delivered by the known organization increases the success of social marketing in promoting healthy lifestyle. This study provides important information for the non-profit organization about selecting the significant criteria to lead to the success of the campaign.


2021 ◽  
pp. 175797592199863
Author(s):  
Ilhan Abdullahi ◽  
Navneet Kaur Chana ◽  
Marco Zenone ◽  
Paola Ardiles

With the current COVID-19 pandemic impacting communities across the globe, diverse health promotion strategies are required to address the wide-ranging challenges we face. Art is a highly engaging tool that promotes positive well-being and increases community engagement and participation. The ‘Create Hope Mural’ campaign emerged as an arts-based health promotion response to inspire dialogue on why hope is so important for Canadians during these challenging times. This initiative is a partnership between a health promotion network based in Vancouver and an ‘open air’ art museum based in Toronto. Families were invited to submit artwork online that represents the concept of hope. This paper discusses the reflections of organizers of this arts-based health promotion initiative during the early months of the pandemic in Canada. Our findings reveal the importance of decolonizing practices, centring the voices of those impacted by crisis, while being attentive to the social and political context. These learnings can be adopted by prospective health promoters attempting to use arts-based methods to address social and health inequities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-63
Author(s):  
Angela Makris ◽  
Mahmooda Khaliq ◽  
Elizabeth Perkins

Background: One in four Americans have a disability but remain an overlooked minority population at risk for health care disparities. Adults with disabilities can be high users of primary care but often face unmet needs and poor-quality care. Providers lack training, knowledge and have biased practices and behaviors toward people with disabilities (PWD); which ultimately undermines their quality of care. Focus of the Article: The aim is to identify behavior change interventions for decreasing health care disparities for people with disabilities in a healthcare setting, determine whether those interventions used key features of social marketing and identify gaps in research and practice. Research Question: To what extent has the social marketing framework been used to improve health care for PWD by influencing the behavior of health care providers in a primary health care setting? Program Design/Approach: Scoping Review. Importance to the Social Marketing Field: Social marketing has a long and robust history in health education and public health promotion, yet limited work has been done in the disabilities sector. The social marketing framework encompasses the appropriate features to aligned with the core principles of the social model of disability, which espouses that the barriers for PWD lie within society and not within the individual. Incorporating elements of the social model of disability into the social marketing framework could foster a better understanding of the separation of impairment and disability in the healthcare sector and open a new area of research for the field. Results: Four articles were found that target primary care providers. Overall, the studies aimed to increase knowledge, mostly for clinically practices and processes, not clinical behavior change. None were designed to capture if initial knowledge gains led to changes in behavior toward PWD. Recommendations: The lack of published research provides an opportunity to investigate both the applicability and efficacy of social marketing in reducing health care disparities for PWD in a primary care setting. Integrating the social model of disability into the social marketing framework may be an avenue to inform future interventions aimed to increase health equity and inclusiveness through behavior change interventions at a systems level.


2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jami L. Fraze ◽  
Maria Rivera-Trudeau ◽  
Laura McElroy

In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began developing a social marketing campaign, Prevention IS Care, to encourage physicians to routinely screen HIV-infected patients for HIV transmission behaviors and to deliver HIV prevention messages. The planning team selected behavioral theories on the basis of formative research conducted during 2004–2005 and integrated these theories into the social marketing framework. The team decided to use the diffusion of innovation model and social cognitive theory. They selected as their target audience primary care and infectious disease physicians in private practice who deliver care to 50 or more persons living with HIV (PLWH). The social marketing framework, the diffusion of innovation model, and the social cognitive theory facilitated the development of this audience-centered campaign and provided elements that may encourage physicians to adopt the innovation: routine screening of HIV-infected patients for HIV transmission behaviors and delivery of HIV prevention messages during office visits.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamini Manikam ◽  
Rebekah Russell-Bennett

Purpose – Despite the importance of theory as a driving framework, many social marketers either fail to explicitly use theory as the basis of designing social marketing interventions or default to familiar theories which may not accurately reflect the nature of the behavioural issue. The purpose of this paper is therefore to propose and demonstrate the social marketing theory (SMT)-based approach for designing social marketing interventions, campaigns or tools. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper proposes a four-step process and illustrates this process by applying the SMT-based approach to the digital component of a social marketing intervention for preventing domestic violence. Findings – For effective social marketing interventions, the underpinning theory must reflect consumer insights and key behavioural drivers and be used explicitly in the design process. Practical implications – Social marketing practitioners do not always understand how to use theory in the design of interventions, campaigns or tools, and scholars do not always understand how to translate theories into practice. This paper outlines a process and illustrates how theory can be selected and applied. Originality/value – This paper proposes a process for theory selection and use in a social marketing context.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Allyson Dooley ◽  
Sandra C. Jones ◽  
Don Iverson

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 2872-2881 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catrinel Craciun ◽  
Uwe Flick

How the social and institutional context is structured and represented by its actors has an impact on positive aging representations. This qualitative study explores professionals’ views on positive aging, how they promote positive aging in their practice and what disparities occur between their discourses and the actual practice of promoting positive aging. Interviews were conducted with professionals from different active aging promotion services and analyzed with thematic coding. Findings show professionals hold negative views on aging while trying to promote positive views in their work, illustrating an existing theory-practice gap. Strategies used in practice can be integrated in existing agency models and inform interventions and active aging policies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Dao Truong

Purpose Although the social marketing field has developed relatively quickly, little is known about the careers of students who chose social marketing as their main subject of study. Such research is important not only because it reveals employment trends and mobility but also because it informs policy making with respect to curriculum development as well as raises governmental and societal interest in the social marketing field. This paper aims to analyse the career pathways of doctoral graduates who examined social marketing as the subject of their theses. Doctoral graduates represent a special group in a knowledge economy, who are considered the best qualified for the creation and dissemination of knowledge and innovation. Design/methodology/approach A search strategy identified 209 doctoral-level social marketing theses completed between 1971 and 2015. A survey was then delivered to dissertation authors, which received 117 valid responses. Findings Results indicate that upon graduation, most graduates secured full-time jobs, where about 66 per cent worked in higher education, whereas the others worked in the government, not-for-profit and private sectors. Currently, there is a slight decline in the number of graduates employed in the higher education, government and not-for-profit sectors but an increase in self-employed graduates. A majority of graduates are working in the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada. Overall, levels of international mobility and research collaboration are relatively low. Originality/value This is arguably the first study to examine the career paths of social marketing doctoral graduates.


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