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Childhood Obesity Education Campaign

STUDENT EXAMPLE CASE – PLEASE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

Problem Statement

State X is suffering from a childhood obesity epidemic with 1 in every 4 child being obese, and up to 40% of children in minority groups being obese.

With the limited health literacy of children and the required motivation and incentive for children to change their health for the better, is a social marketing campaign enough to generate change for children to make informed healthy food choices and improving health literacy?

Landscape assessment

What we know:

Obesity rates for kids in State X

Social media approach (showing kids being unhealthy and sedentary w/ unhealthy habits)

Increased obesity rates among minority groups

What we don’t know:

Programs already in place to help combat obesity

Budget for creating social media marketing campaign

No plan to enhance health literacy than the recommended Engage, Educate, Empower and Enable approach by the Institute of Medicine.

Social dynamic of cities in this state (rural versus suburban, and crime and violence levels)

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholders in this proposed social media campaign

The Children

The Parents

The local health advocates

State Health Officials

Competing social media advertisers

Complimentary social media advertisers

Real estate owners

Website & social media platform owners

Value Assessment

Values Chosen for the Child Stakeholder in mind

Equity

Will Social economic status as well as perceived health literacy affect the way minority children adhere to the social media message compared to others?

Beneficence

Could the marketing that depicts the children being unhealthy be perceived as negative and effect efficacy and motivation to change?

Duty

How responsible are the children for taking control of their own health before and after being subjected to the health marketing?

Principles and Criteria

Social Acceptability: How well would the media campaign be received by the intended audience? How well is this viewed by all stakeholders?

Harm: Does the intended option work towards reducing obesity rates effectively, or create more social issues?

Effectiveness: Does this option reach the intended audience most effectively through its channel of communication and delivery?

Opinions & Criteria

Our options for a social marketing decision

Option 1: Continue on with the intended currently planned social media campaign.

Option 2 : Reject the proposed social marketing

Option 3 : Tweak the social marketing to be more engaging and inform how to achieve healthy eating habits, rather than shaming bad ones by holding after school programs focused on exercise and eating right.

Recommendations

Interpreting the Choice

With our known knowledge and intended purpose of encouraging health, using option 3 would be my suggestion as it seems less offensive to the intended audience, whilst also showing what good health habits looks like an putting a positive spin on it.

Option 2 would be objectively bad as the obesity epidemic simply perpetuates itself.

Option 1 would probably have some impact, but may be received poorly by some, and others in low socio-economic status may not possess the necessary media channels to receive the information.

Questions???

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Data. Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,2007.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Basics about childhood obesity. http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood/basics.html

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Trust for America’s Health. F as in fat: How obesity threatens America’s future, 2010. http://healthyamericans.org/reports/obesity2010/