Alexandra Rampy’s (a.k.a Social Butterfly) recent blog post, Why Advocacy Is an Important Social Marketing Tool inspired me to write about the topic of advocacy in public health.  I have always been rather fond of the Social Ecological Model, which recognizes community and societal influences on the individual.

Humans are complex social creatures and do not live within a vacuum. I always smile when I think of the line from the first Shrek movie when he tells the donkey, “Ogres are like onions … Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.” People have layers of influence affecting their decision-making processes and choices about whether to engage in healthy or unhealthy behaviors.

In public health, we often create campaigns focusing on individual behavior change and disregard social and environmental constraints. Take physical activity among our youth for example. We can preach, through a health communication campaign, about how youth just need to get outdoors and play for 30 minutes a day. However, we often fail to consider whether they live in safe neighborhoods, or if they live in a well-lit area with sidewalks or if they are breathing clean air. These are just a few examples of environmental factors we tend to overlook.

Enter Advocacy

We can advocate for our public health communications program.  We can advocate for more funding for public health prevention campaigns. We can advocate for more political and media attention. But, we really need to use advocacy to reduce the environmental and societal barriers faced by the general population. 

Rampy discusses the access, availability and affordability of fruits and vegetables.  I’ve shared my thoughts on the Five a Day campaign in a previous post. Image the success the campaign could have if the target populations had access to and could afford to eat five fruits and vegetables a day. Why are we spending precious CDC dollars to educate population on the pros and cons of eating five a day when they literally cannot obtain the products we are advocating?

Marketing and communications professionals should work together with public health advocates to ensure our campaigns are realistic, well-funded and reality based.  What are some of your ideas for how we can achieve this goal?

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Read More from Walking the Path:

1. Love Life and Live Up – HIV Campaigns Around the World
2. The Own Your C Anti-Smoking Campaign
3. Promoting Public Health – Not the Public’s Health.