Change4Life Campaign

Following the government’s launch of the Change4Life campaign, which aims to get adults and children to eat more healthily and take some exercise, we have seen a flurry of TV adverts, celebrity and corporate endorsement and politicians proudly announcing the new campaign.

It has a very laudable longterm objective of helping to prevent over 90% of the UK’s children becoming overweight or obese by 2050. The medical on-costs of this would, of course, be enormous and with a huge part of the adult population dying earlier than previous generations. However, one wonders, how successful this campaign will actually be and how long it will be before it gets swept under the ‘political carpet’, joining the many other health-related initiatives, targets and campaigns that have come before it? From a professional standpoint, we have had years of browbeating and public service announcements on eating healthily and taking exercise, yet we have the highest obesity levels in Europe. As a nation, we seem to find it very difficult to moderate our food intake and to leave the car behind.

Rather than continuing with the same unsuccessful methods, perhaps it’s time to try a different track? Nearly all of the current campaign’s spend appears to be on advertising (which is great for the likes of M&C Saatchi, who were awarded the advertising contract) and precious little for actually being able to change attitudes on the ground. Indeed, the Change4Life website’s search of ‘local activities’ just lists all of the local fitness centres in each area of England, which is something most of us could do by just looking in Yellow Pages! If individuals feel so inclined, they will seek out where they can go to exercise and, indeed they do, as many thousands will sign up for gym memberships this month that they will no longer be using by March. The issue is not so much where to find the information as to getting people to change their attitudes to diet and exercise and to maintain it. Shorterm national advertising and lists of fitness centres will not achieve large longterm attitudinal changes.

We need to localize the campaign as much as possible, actively engaging health professionals and fitness professionals alike. A large key to this could be much greater involvement of GP’s, whose practices are currently awarded for reducing their patients BMI’s and Blood Pressure. By promoting much greater links between health professionals, fitness professionals and dieticians, we have a chance to change attitudes directly at the point of intervention. In addition, current management of Exercise Referral Schemes is extremely patchy across the country and woefully underfunded, or not funded at all in some areas. Some of the funding from the campaign could have been channeled into these areas.

Another interesting point was made in the editorial of the Guardian (Herd Instinct), which suggests that we should be making more of peer pressure and turning a negative campaign into positive messages about those who do exercise and watch their diet.

Overall, we really do have to make some drastic changes to the health of children and adults in England, and, whilst a national campaign is better than no campaign at all, it could be considerably more effective with a different approach.

Posted on Monday, 12 January 2009 at 9:46 pm

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