FINAL

Health Agencies and Marketing Plans

Alabama Department of Public Health has a variety of services and programs that it offers to its diverse population. It provides clinical, environmental, home and community services to its local residents. The clinical services include family planning, cancer screening, tuberculosis screening, and health insurance for children among other things. Environmental services, on the other hand, are put in place to ensure standards in several health-related and environmental service areas are on point to protect the public from injury and to prevent the spread of diseases. In other words, the health agency has protection activities that include complaint investigations, health regulation enforcement, and licensing, permitting and inspections for various facilities such as body art facilities, jails or prisons, and hotels. Finally, home and community services include home health care and life care services. They are put in place to ensure everyone is comfortable in their home environment.

Generally speaking, the Alabama Department of Public Health was established to focus on a number of health related issues such as emergency preparedness and emergency medical services. It also focuses on disease prevention, home and community health, healthcare access, family health and regulation and licensure. Also, the health agency is responsible for publishing health-related pamphlets that are readily available to the residents of Alabama. The topics in the pamphlets usually vary as they range from environmental health, nutrition and physical activity to injury prevention. So, I think that the department has done a good job so far in keeping the residents of Alabama safe.

Reason being, when you look at their mission and vision statement, you’ll notice that the department is doing all it can to provide a comfortable environment for the state’s residents. According to their website, the health agency’s mission states that it aims to protect, promote and improve the health of individuals and communities of Alabama. On the other hand, its vision statement stipulates that the department wants to lead the state in assuring the health of Alabamians by promoting healthy, safe, prepared and informed communities. When you combine all of that with the agency’s core values, you’ll see why I am saying the facility has done a good job so far.

Now, my marketing plan is designed to promote nutrition among teens especially in middle schools. Reason being, these teens form the economically active population and make the most nutritional mistakes leading to the high cases of obesity in the country. My product strategy (in this case “promoting nutrition”) involves the positive impact that breakfast has on Continuous Assessment Tests scores and classroom behaviors. My pricing strategy, on the other hand, involves costs and recommendations that will be helpful in lowering the barriers of implementing a Grab-N-Go breakfast. For instance, in case of student rejection, the school faculty can offer a variety of foods each day and they can present foods in a manner that students find more attractive. The placement strategy is put in place to guide the location that breakfast is sold and consumed in middle schools. The sales will minimize the amount of time needed to purchase while the consumption allows students to eat breakfast where they can interact with other students.

Finally, my promotional strategy involves recommendations for promoting the program to various teens around the state. I think that we can use older teens and other high school students to promote regular breakfast consumption. Also, in promoting the program, parents or teachers can use word of mouth, school websites and even signs placed in front of schools to reach out to students who are having trouble grasping the importance of the program. Furthermore, with the aid of the Alabama Department of Public Health, my plan can be successfully implemented.

The main aim will be to reduce unhealthy snacking and enhance nutrition education in various middle schools. With the department’s mission and vision, we can get state of the art nutrition materials that can be helpful in supporting the curriculum adopted by the schools. Also, we can adopt the environmental services provided by the department to create a cafeteria environment that will help improve merchandising or presentation of milk, fruits and vegetables to increase consumption among teens in the school. Reason being, nutrition during childhood and adolescence is essential for growth and development, health and well-being (Story et al., 2002). So, I think that both my marketing plan and the health agency’s resources will come in handy during the implementation of nutrition programs in schools.

In conclusion, I believe that my marketing plan is designed to help promote proper nutritional values to teens around the state and with the help of the health agency, it can be successfully implemented. All we have to do is acquire state of the art resources and create a cafeteria environment that all teens can access in the school environment. Furthermore, the health agency’s mission and statement are simple and straight to the point, and they can help in implementing the said marketing plan. So, all tees should be open to change and hope that all things will turn out for the better in future.

References