Health Campaign for a Healthy Behavior: Promoting Walking - Research Paper Example

Health Campaign for a Healthy Behavior: Promoting Walking Introduction Public health has gained increasing importance over the passage of time. With improvements in technology and advancements in medical science, life expectancy of the average human being has increased greatly. The start of the new century heralds yet more expectations and advances. One can look back at the conditions of health a few decades back, and the staggering improvements that have taken place over the years. At the start of the twentieth century, few dreamt about progresses in public health. However, by 1925, public health leaders like C.E.A Winslow were recording an increase in the life expectancy by 50% (Turnock, 2009, p.1). Discoveries and trends like these had implications for the future (Turnock, 2009, p.1). Hopes rose high regarding the increase in the life expectancy through health awareness and health promotion. Health care professionals and the government started recognizing the importance of public health. Gradually, public health became an integral component of policies, budgets and resource allocation. Today, public health is recognized as fundamental towards the promotion of health and increasing the life expectancy. Public health is defined as “the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health and efficiency through organized community effort (Turnock, 2009, p.10). The essence of public health is “birthright of health and longevity” (Turnock, 2009, p.10). Health campaigning is a crucial component of public health. A campaign is defined as a time-limited and place specific advocacy initiative (Corporations and Health Watch, 2010). Campaigning is the result of the efforts of one organization or more than one working together for the purpose influencing activities that are deleterious to health. Campaigns can target large groups of population, or smaller, more specific groups engaged in unhealthy practices. Campaigns are a good way to ameliorate the health and lifestyles of the people. This is because they help to focus the resources of the organization to a particular pressing health issue (Corporations and Health Watch, 2010). This paper discusses how health campaigning can be used for the promotion of health. The health campaign is regarding the practice of daily walking. The initial part of the paper discusses the various aspects of the health campaign like the target population, the reason for walking, campaign objectives and the various aspects of communicating the health issue. The paper also highlights the factors that influence and motivate human behaviors towards health care. Identification of the Target Population Bensley and Brookins-Fisher (2009, p.84) are of the view that when designing a health campaign, campaign planners should consider a specific, well-segmented focus population; this group of people should include those people who are at the greatest risk for identified health threats. These groups are the prime recipients of information regarding health awareness. As discussed in detail in the following paragraphs, physical activity is essential for the health and well-being of the person. In this regard, the promotional message has been narrowed down to encompass walking only. When people are younger, there are engaged in greater amounts of physical activity. Children are always running around and exercising their muscles in the process. However as one ages, the level of physical activity the person engages in steadily declines. Age is an important determinant of the mode of transportation chosen by the people; as a result, the rates of children walking are very high than older people. In a research conducted by Pucher and Renne (2003), 7.8% of the people from 40–64 year old age group engaged in walking compared to 15.2% children from the 5–15 year old age group; these statistics show that the older age group had almost half the number of walking trips as the younger group. Moreover, walking rates declined steadily as the person ages. In the aforementioned study, 9.3% of the people from 16 to 24 age group walked, with rates falling down to 8.9% in people aged 65 years and more (Pucher & Renne, 2003). Also, there was a gender disparity in the number of trips being conducted; males made more walking trips than females. People ascribe various reasons for walking. The most common reason for walking is for the purpose of exercise and promotion of health, with 27% of the people involved in walking reporting that they walked over exercise purposes. However, there are other reasons also for walking. These include personal errands (17.3%), recreation (15.3), for going home (10.2%), visiting a friend or a relative (8.8%), for going to school or work (5.1%) and walking the dog (4.0%). Also, 26.9% of the people walk for 0.25 mile or less. Only 14.8% people walked for more than 2 miles (Pucher & Renne, 2003). These statistics clearly show that a large percentage of older population does not walk. The walking statistics fall greatly as the person enters his or her 20s. The risk of acquiring diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases increases with increasing age. There is little risk of such health threats at a younger age. Therefore the target population should be people who walk less or do not walk at all and are either at a high risk or prone to develop health problems if they do not engage in walking. People aged over 40 years have a high chance of developing health complications due to lack of physical activity. However, people in their late 2os and 30s can greatly, if not completely, averse the chances of developing bad health in the future if interventions are made. Therefore, for the campaigning for walking, individuals aged above 25 years of age are considered as the target population. The two major reasons that people usually give for not exercising is that they either do not have the time or they do not see any obvious results of the endeavor (Quinn, 2010). The health campaign research should also investigate the reasons why people are not involved in healthy physical activity. On a general note, people who do engage in walking are aware of the health effects of living a sedentary lifestyle. In order to influence the perceptions of people who are do not walk, those channels of communication should be used which the people trust. Importance of Physical Activity It has been extensively reported that physical activity is very important for the health of an individual. An assortment of benefits of physical activity has been documented. Exercise can help people maintain a healthy weight and bring down the chances of cardiovascular disease (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Exercise helps to metabolize the harmful deposits of cholesterol in the body. Cholesterol can form plaques in the arteries of the body, causing their lumen to narrow and reducing the blood flow. The formation of plaques in coronary blood vessels can significantly impair the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the heart tissue. As a result, there are increased chances of ischemia; severe blockage of the arteries can completely obstruct the flow of blood to the heart, resulting in heart attack. There is also a strong relationship between obesity and diabetes (Kumar, 2009, p.5). Physical activity has also been found to decrease the risk of cancers and to make the bones and muscle strong (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Moreover, exercising everyday creates a positive attitude in the individual, improving his or her mental health. It has also been established that physical activity increases the life expectancy greatly (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Furthermore, it is recommended that for individuals who are afraid that heavy exercise can hurt them, moderate-intensity aerobic activity, like walking briskly on a regular basis, is the safest physical activity to engage in. For people who have a chronic health condition, or who are at risk for cardiovascular disease, it is not recommended to engage in strenuous exercise if they have been living a sedentary lifestyle earlier (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Health Communication Defined Health communication entails the study and the use of communication methods that can be employed for impacting the decisions of the people and the community as a whole for the promotion of their health (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2010). Health communication is needed for the enhancement of all aspects of health. It not only prevents the occurrence of disease but is also effective in the management of chronic health conditions and the encouragement of healthy attitudes. Health communication relates to the provision of health care and disease prevention in a diverse range of contexts. These include the interaction between the health care provider and the target individual, the degree of knowledge that the individual acquires about possible debilitating health conditions and health risks that he is exposed to as well as the motivational drive in the individual to gain more awareness about health, adherence to the medical recommendations and regimens, communication health risks to the population and the use of media and other channels of communication (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2010). The usage of telehealth applications is also affected by health communication (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2010). There are also many recognizable benefits that are derived from effective health communication. Through effective health communication, the individual is acutely made aware of the health risks that he or she faces and the possible solutions to it. Furthermore health communication provides individuals the motivation that they need to bring about a change in their lifestyles and to embrace healthy behaviors. Health communication also helps people in similar plight to find support in each other, which further affects or reinforces the need to change for a healthy life (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2010). Health communication also encourages the delivery of good and quality health services, and makes people more concerned about taking care of themselves. Health campaigns make the delivery of health care services better and promote social norms that encourage a better quality of life (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2010). Health Change Behavior Communication pervades all the degrees of human experience and is pertinent to the comprehension of human behavior. Mostly all public health endeavors intend to instill positive health behaviors in the target individuals. There are various theories that have emerged in response to changing the attitude of people regarding their health. The expectant theories include the health belief model and the theories of rational behavior and planned behavior (Finnegan & Viswanath, n.d.). These theories rely on communication processes to bring about a health change. The health model states that there are greater chances of people bringing about modifications in their health-related behavior if they perceive a certain health risk as important. The model also adheres to the notion that individuals are more likely to bring a change in themselves if they consider the health risks greater as and graver than the obstacles that come in the way of bringing the associated health change. Communication also has an integral role in affecting the opinions and attitudes of reasoned action and planned behavior. These theories have established a relationship between behavioral change and the deliberate thoughts and efforts of the individual to bring about a change. These intentions are in turn affected by the attitude and perceived notions of the people towards a particular attitude along with their opinion of what referent groups consider this attitude to be (Finnegan & Viswanath, n.d.). Communication is crucial in influencing the perceived notions of the people and thereby greatly increment the chances of change. Therefore from the perspective of health campaigning, the content that is to be communicated should aim to influence the notions and perceptions of the people. It should aim to make people realize that the threat being posed by health risks needs immediate attention and is worth the trouble that is undertaken for enforcing healthy attitudes. The health campaign should influence the thinking of the people such that they intend to make efforts for improving their health by going for a walk daily for at least half an hour. To bring about a change in the attitudes of the people and to constructively make them work towards the development of healthy attitudes such as walking, it is necessary that the content used for communication is persuasive. Psychological research conducted on the different elements of persuasive communication has come to establish a number of elements that make communication more effective and persuasive (Suls & Wallston, 2003, p.55). These elements can be grouped into four main classes: the origin of the persuasive message (including attractiveness, accuracy etc), the target group who is meant to get the message (includes the geographical expanse and the attitudes of the people), the contents of the message (like rhetorical statements), and the context in which the message is received (reaction of the audience etc) (Suls & Wallston, 2003, p.55). This follows that the message for improving health through walking should take into consideration all these elements. The health campaign planners should take into account the geographical distances that they are required to cover, and how many households are there which house people aged 25 years or more. The message should also consider that people would not be so open to change. Therefore rhetoric and other persuasive techniques can be employed for making the content of the message more convincing. In the early part of the process of health campaigning, the campaign planners need to segment the population. Formative research, which refers to gaining input from the audience and to assessing their attitude towards the recommended activity, helps to determine what the wants and needs of the target group are, and what factors and variables can affect their behavior, like advantages, obstacles and readiness to change (Bensley & Brookins-Fisher, 2009, p.84). Formative research is integral to gain knowledge about the expected response of the target group to be, and how can the resistance to health promotion be overcome. People would understand the importance of attitude change if they are sensitized to the health risks that lack of exercise expose them to. Mostly it has been seen that people who are not well-educated are not aware of the importance of exercise. Therefore awareness of the health benefits of exercise is likely to catch the attention of the general public. Characteristics of Effective Health Communication The importance of health communication lies in the fact that it provides a link between health and communication. Effective health communication has a number of characteristics that need to be taken into consideration when campaigning for the promotion of brisk walking in people. Firstly, the information being provided should be valid and consistent with the recent research. For instance there are a number of myths rife in the community. One such myth is that walking does not provide any benefit; rather people should be engaged in strenuous exercises to gain actual benefit from physical activity (Bumgardner, 2008). Research conducted has disproved this myth. It has been well-documented that walking at a moderate pace for 30 to 60 minutes every day has huge benefits in significantly decreasing major health risks (Bumgardner, 2008). Another attribute of effective health campaigning is that the information that is being delivered should be delivered through a medium that is easily accessible and available. Therefore for this purpose, the promotion of walking needs to be done through a medium that is used or is available to most, if not all, of the people in the target group. There should be a balance in the information provided; the information communicated should cover not only the benefits of a healthy attitude but also the health risks associated by not following it. The information provided regarding waling should cover the advantages of walking on health, and the health risks that arise from living a sedentary lifestyle. It should also be emphasized that strenuous activity should not be undertaken from the start; people who are not active should increase their level of activity gradually over the period of time, giving time for their muscles to adapt to it. Elaborating further on other campaigning requirements, the information should maintain its consistency over the time. Information that has not been established firmly through research should not be reported as people are not likely to follow it, disregarding it as trial results. The information communicated should be communicated taking into regard the cultural norms of the community (Dagron & Tufte, 2006, p.627). This also entails that the health campaigners should take into account linguistic issues if the target group of people have different ethnicities. Since the health campaign under discussion is being carried out in an area where English is the medium of instruction, and most of the people living in the area understand English, the information would be communicated in English. Also, the information provided should be aimed to be available to the maximum number of people identified as members of the target population. Effective health campaigning also involves that provision or access to the information is continued or repeated after a period of time (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2010). The message being delivered through can be most effective if it is delivered when the target population is most receptive. The information provided should not be difficult to fathom, and should be understood easily by a layman; too many technical details in the content might not be able to catch the attention of the average person. In the case of communicating information for the promotion of walking, the content should not be too complicated or lengthy. It should be easy to navigate through. The health campaigners should avoid writing the physiology of complicated medical processes that result in health risks arising out of a sedentary lifestyle. Simply speaking the information should cover the various aspects of walking, and contain guidelines on how much walking is recommended every day. For this health campaign, the focus is on walking at a moderate pace for half an hour every day by people aged above 25 years. Channels of Communication The options that are available for the communication of information are undergoing rapid changes with advances in technology (Fertman & Allensworth, 2010, p.204). The strength of the information delivered to the public depends mainly on the mode of communication. Whereas television can be effective communication in one area, it might not be very successful in delivering information in another area. With this view in mind, various modes of health communication exist. The channel to be chosen depends on which method of communication is the most accessible and understandable to the inhabitants of a particular area. One of the most effectual ways is distribution of health messages through massive public education campaigns; the main motive to bring a positive change in the social atmosphere to develop awareness, change perception and approach and to promote the individuals to incorporate suggested manners in their everyday lives. As different modes of communication have gradually developed over the years, public health messages have been incorporated as an integral part of them through electronic media, mainly television and radio, and through print media, essentially newspapers, pamphlets and flyers. Another practice is the usage of social-marketing techniques to reach out to the people of the community. Other campaigns have incorporated mass media alongside community-based programs to promote health education. In community- based program an effective practice being used is the training of personnel belonging to the community and helping them spread health education in their native language. Different communities have diverse issues. Health communication programs should be devised according to the needs and requirements of the society. In many social setups public service messages need to be less explicit and more modest, while in other societies candidness might not be an issue. In many parts of the county, access to electronic media can be a scarce commodity. Such areas can include lands far from the main cities, mainly farmland and countryside. For this reason, in such areas the most effective method of health communication is print media and community-based program involving trained employees to deliver information. On the other hand, in these areas literacy rate is also a grave setback which makes print media not as efficient as it is thought to be. For this reason qualified workers can play a beneficial role. Public demonstrations in which charts and pictures are shown can be helpful in presenting a clear picture of the public message being delivered. When selecting a channel for communication, it is of immense importance that most appropriate channel is chosen according to the nature of the information to be disseminated. People are not likely to trust emails completely due to fact that unofficial source use it for disseminating information and the reliability of many of such emails is questionable (Berry, 2007, p.7). Radio and televisions can broadcast information with flair of drama, but they cannot guarantee that the entire target group has received the message or not (Johnson, Ledlow & Cwiek, 2005, p.195). Flyers or pamphlets are one of the methods used in print media to impart information. Focusing on this particular mode, the advantages of using flyers are numerous. Firstly, it is cost-effective; printing a one or two page flier with all the necessary elements of the information to be conveyed is quite cheap as compared to printing in newspaper which has bundle of pages. In comparison to electronic media no expensive equipment is needed for the production and distribution of flyers as it is in the case of TV advertisements. The information printed on the flier, which is precise and to the point, can be coupled with pictures and flow charts to increase its impact on the reader. They can be made in different colors, with various illustrations for immediate attention of the targeted individuals. Additionally, flyers are easy to distribute and handle. Youngsters, such as teenagers can be put up to this job, since no specialized workforce is required in distributing flyers. Abundant amounts can be carried by a single worker and distributed to hundreds of households and individuals. Moreover, instead of skimming through large newspapers, people find it much easier to read a two page precise and concise of the required information. In today’s era, where everything is so fast paced, people find it more convenient to read flyers for the information they need. Summing up the above points, flyers are easy to print, distribute and read and therefore can serve as effective as well as efficient means of health communication regarding walking. Therefore an effective channel of communication for the promotion of walking can be flyers. The flyers will inculcate all the characteristics of effective communication discussed above. Conclusion Therefore, from this discussion, one can conclude that the health benefits acquired from physical exercise are extensive. To alleviate a number of health complications that may arise out of being unfit physically, physical activity is very important. As the person ages, the level of physical activity also declines. Therefore it is essential to focus on the promotion of health by engaging in brisk walk in individuals who are 25 years or older. People can be encouraged to walk at the time of the day that is most convenient to them. The information being relayed across to the target population through flyers needs to be accurate and persuasive. The flyers should grab the attention of the reader, be motivating, and not be too technical in their tone. However, what needs to be recognized at this point is that health campaign requires the dedication and commitment of the campaign planners, not only in doing the preliminary research about the attitudes prevalent in the community, but also in segmenting the population, in creating a flier that is persuasive and effective in bringing about the required health behavior change and in deciding upon the channels of communication that the target population trusts. Reference List Bensley, R. J., & Brookins-Fisher, J. (2009). Community health education methods: a practical guide (3rd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning. Berry, D. (2007). Health communication: theory and practice. McGraw-Hill International. Bumgardner, W. (2008). Walking myths. 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