Can health campaigns make people ill? The iatrogenic potential of population-based cannabis prevention

Thanks to Harry Sumnall for pointing out a paper he and Mark Bellis have done for the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health which looks at some of the same issues I covered in an earlier post.  The abstract says:

In the UK and elsewhere, social marketing is becoming a major feature of health-improvement strategies. Based on marketing techniques developed for commercial sales, social marketing uses imagery (eg television, magazines, internet and billboards) and phrases (eg radio adverts and slogans) specifically aimed at target groups (eg young people), typically to increase their positive health behaviours. Both national organisations and local health services routinely develop such interventions, often with little evidence of specifically how each campaign will affect public health. In general, such campaigns are regarded as potentially beneficial and possibly ineffective, but rarely are they considered dangerous to health. However, with access to powerful media such as the internet, professional eye-catching graphics and demographic targeting techniques unimaginable only a decade ago, such views need reassessing. In this report, we highlight the potential for social marketing campaigns to have negative repercussions, using cannabis prevention as an example.

The article goes on to argue that commercial organisations that invest in social marketing do so after testing their efficacy.  They say that if governments and health promotion agencies are to use the techniques they too need to put in the research on both the positive and negative outcomes from their campaigns.

Filed under: NCCDP, media , normative education, social marketing