Health campaign

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Under a health campaign refers to a special kind campaign on health promotion aims or prevention. Health promotion includes measures and activities that aim to strengthen people's health resources and potential. A campaign is a time-limited action with a defined goal that is attempted to be achieved through the planned and coordinated interaction of several people or actors. In many health campaigns, participants or interested parties are given the opportunity to obtain information but also to continue to get involved. In some cases there are fluid transitions to prevention, such as drug prevention . One example of this is the Be Smart Don't Start competition in the European Union, which aims to encourage people not to smoke in the first place.

Whether a health campaign is ultimately successful depends on a number of factors. An important psychological influencing factor is the so-called reactance effect. If the message of the campaign is conveyed to the target audience in a way that gives one the feeling that one's own scope for freedom is restricted, this will predominantly lead to the rejection of the conveyed message. The possible consequences here would be that the behavior that was originally intended to be avoided by the campaign is now shown all the more strongly by these people.

It can be concluded from this that health campaigns that are characterized by fewer attempts to influence and prohibit, leave more freedom for interpretation and self-will, achieve more positive results.

Examples

  • 5 a day (since 2000): 5 a day is a campaign that aims to improve the health of the population by increasing the consumption of fruit and vegetables.
  • Healthy nutrition and exercise (since 2007): "Healthy nutrition and exercise" or "Fit instead of fat" is a national action plan of the German Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection and the Federal Ministry of Health for the prevention of malnutrition, lack of exercise, obesity and related issues Diseases.
  • IN FORM : National Action Plan of the Federal Government to Improve Eating and Exercise Behavior in Germany.

literature

  • Regina E. Lundgren and Andrea H. McMakin: Public Health Campaigns. (2013).
  • Sischka, Décieux, Neufang, and Mergener (2016): The reactance effect or: Why health campaigns can fail. The Inquisitive Mind, 4/16. Available at: http://de.in-mind.org/article/der-reaktanzeffekt-oder-warum-gesundheitskampagnen-scheitern-koennen
  • Reactance. (2015). In online lexicon for psychology and pedagogy. Retrieved from http://lexikon.stangl.eu/1844/reaktanz/ (2018-02-02)