Word count: 1, 932
Learning outcomes:
Discuss the effectiveness of health promotion strategies.
Obesity and smoking are one of the leading causes of death worldwide and they are both
unhealthy behaviours which are trying to be stopped. Health promotion is an important factors
to stopping unhealthy behaviours and there are health promotion strategies taking place all over
the world. Obesity is the excess of body fat which can result in an impairment of general physical
health. It is beginning to be an epidemic with around one billion of adults being overweight.
Obesity can be caused because of multiple factors (genetic, socio-cultural, cognitive, etc.) and
can sometimes be classified as an addiction which refers to an uncontrollable behaviour in using
the specific substance that they are dependent on. Because it’s considered an epidemic, there
are a range of health promotion strategies that are made in order to help people overcome
obesity and not start the habits in the first place one of which is the Change4Life campaign.
The National Health Service of U.K (NHS) has made the Change4Life campaign which aims to
prevent obesity from an early age. The Change4Life campaign which was launched in 2009 was
made in order to ensure that children are following a healthy lifestyle because obesity can start
at a young age if the lifestyle of the parents is unhealthy. The main goal of the campaign is
divided into smaller goals such as helping children to reduce fat intake, control portion size,
exercise more, regular meals, reduce the amount of snacks, and avoid sedentary lifestyles. They
have therefore developed eight slogans of behaviours on posters some of which are “Cut Back
Fat”, “60 Active Minutes”, and “Me Sized Meals” and they have featured on television
advertising. The campaign also measured the amount of people that were aware of those
behaviours by distributing questionnaires to parents in January 2009 and did the same in
December 2009. They have found that all of the behaviours had a significant increase in the
percentage of people aware of it (such as “Me Sized Meals” which increased by 32% in one
year), except for one which was “5 A Day”. The campaign has generated stories of families who
are living a healthy lifestyle in order to bring normality to the rest and follow their example of
Learning outcomes:
Discuss the effectiveness of health promotion strategies.
Obesity and smoking are one of the leading causes of death worldwide and they are both
unhealthy behaviours which are trying to be stopped. Health promotion is an important factors
to stopping unhealthy behaviours and there are health promotion strategies taking place all over
the world. Obesity is the excess of body fat which can result in an impairment of general physical
health. It is beginning to be an epidemic with around one billion of adults being overweight.
Obesity can be caused because of multiple factors (genetic, socio-cultural, cognitive, etc.) and
can sometimes be classified as an addiction which refers to an uncontrollable behaviour in using
the specific substance that they are dependent on. Because it’s considered an epidemic, there
are a range of health promotion strategies that are made in order to help people overcome
obesity and not start the habits in the first place one of which is the Change4Life campaign.
The National Health Service of U.K (NHS) has made the Change4Life campaign which aims to
prevent obesity from an early age. The Change4Life campaign which was launched in 2009 was
made in order to ensure that children are following a healthy lifestyle because obesity can start
at a young age if the lifestyle of the parents is unhealthy. The main goal of the campaign is
divided into smaller goals such as helping children to reduce fat intake, control portion size,
exercise more, regular meals, reduce the amount of snacks, and avoid sedentary lifestyles. They
have therefore developed eight slogans of behaviours on posters some of which are “Cut Back
Fat”, “60 Active Minutes”, and “Me Sized Meals” and they have featured on television
advertising. The campaign also measured the amount of people that were aware of those
behaviours by distributing questionnaires to parents in January 2009 and did the same in
December 2009. They have found that all of the behaviours had a significant increase in the
percentage of people aware of it (such as “Me Sized Meals” which increased by 32% in one
year), except for one which was “5 A Day”. The campaign has generated stories of families who
are living a healthy lifestyle in order to bring normality to the rest and follow their example of
