Promoting health, positively
Why health promotion should inspire, not intimidate
Do you ever find yourself walking through the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon, ready to pay at the counter, when you’re met with a wall of cigarette boxes covered in horrifying pictures of gingivitis or tar-filled lungs? These ads use the tactic of shocking people to make them feel guilty for buying into an unhealthy habit.
This is just one very common example of health promotion we see every day.
What is the difference between positive and negative health promotion?
The World Health Organization defines health promotion as “the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. It moves beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions.”
When the overarching goal of health promotion is to empower people to make good decisions for their health, it’s a tricky task to determine what information and education will be most effective . Health promotion often takes one of two routes:
1. Positive: promote healthy behaviours
2. Negative: negate unhealthy behaviours
Positive health promotion encourages healthy behaviours that showcase positive outcomes for an individual’s health. These efforts often take an explicit value-gained approach to promoting healthy behaviours, instead of implicit value gained. For example, in positive health promotion you might see, “Eat leafy greens and give your bones a boost,” whereas negative health promotion may say, “Your bones will be weak if you don’t eat leafy greens.” The benefit is explicit in the former message, while the latter may require its audience to understand why: because many leafy greens contain calcium, which strengthens bone density.
Many health promotion campaigns that choose to negate unhealthy behaviours have a tendency to shame or stigmatise the very population they are targeting. The issue: in the instance of disease risk — be it alcohol dependancy, diabetes, or excessive shoe-shopping— individuals already feel vulnerable. It is thus important not to negatively impact a precarious emotional state by delivering health information and campaigns that appear daunting, exclusive, and inaccessible.
Additionally, the goal of health promotion is behaviour change at the individual and societal level. So, while negative messaging may be more memorable (or shocking) in creating short-term impact, like the cigarette packs in the grocery store, they do little to support the long-term goals of behaviour change to improve the health of populations.
How to promote good health effectively
The ideal formula involves three components:
Effective positive health promotion = promoting behaviour change (or) good behaviours + tools and resources needed to achieve this + increasing community-wide awareness and support.
For example, if you were to produce a public health campaign regarding the risks of drinking whilst pregnant, instead of an outmoded “don’t drink,” it is most effective to provide support for how the audience can cut back or stop drinking altogether. It is important to advertise a focus on positive outcomes. When targeting pregnant women, highlighting family and positive growth to inspire the best outcome for each person will work better than shaming or scaring individuals to change their behaviour.
When developing health promotion messages, it is also important to take into account cultural considerations that reflect the mainstream attitudes, beliefs and ideas of your target population. Additionally, when communicating about risky health behaviours, health promotion must consider “the active role that family, friends, and media take on when [individuals] form opinions regarding unhealthy habits…” (Geist-Martin et al. 2011) Other influential factors may include social and academic memberships, parent behaviour and health practices, a desire for acceptance, and self-identity.
How Hello Sunday Morning is empowering YOU
Hello Sunday Morning embraces a positive health promotion strategy. Not only do we want to provide the knowledge and tools to make healthy decisions about alcohol, but we also provide opportunities to do just that. We encourage action and support your individual journey, whatever that may be, from limiting yourself to two drinks at a sports game to cutting out drinking altogether.
Hello Sunday Morning is committed to moving beyond individual behaviours to promote a healthier drinking culture for Australia and the world. We promote an individually empowered relationship with alcohol and provide a space where people can go, with out judgement, for support to change. We want everyone to experience the social support and inspiration that can come with behaviour change.
And when social support is not enough, we can equip you with active support through the Daybreak program, which combines multiple non-medicated tactics to facilitate alcohol behaviour change. It includes one-on-one coaching with health professionals and an overwhelmingly supportive community feed where anyone can share their thoughts and feelings anonymously.
Inspire one, inspire all
Changing health behaviour is a long, complex process and health promotion is just the beginning. True behaviour change begins when an individual recognises a problem, desires a change, and feels they have the means to accomplish that goal. With effective and positive health promotion, you’re off to a inspired, supportive start.
Hello Sunday Morning is a movement towards a better drinking culture. Our vision is a world where drinking is an individual choice, not a cultural expectation. How do you feel about your relationship with alcohol?
Download the Daybreak program for iOS or Android to change your drinking habits today.
