Panel Discussion

Many important and preventable risks for poor health involve an individual’s “wants and needs”--voluntary behaviors rooted in lack of awareness, inadequate information, deliberate personal preferences, convenience, and other determinants. Fortunately, ‘the social marketing approach’ provides many options for promoting population health by influencing individual, audience, and population behaviors using strategies, including policy interventions, based on a systematic analysis of consumer choices. For the first time in its history, the Healthy People (HP2020) initiative places three social marketing objectives among those designed to achieve its mission of “improving health through strengthening policy and practice” in public health. This session covers the efforts to get social marketing included in HP2020 (“Past”), presents the results of recent research to assess the baseline measures for each objective (“Present”), and discusses strategies for institutionalizing social marketing for attaining HP2020 targets (“Future”).

Session Objectives: Describe the three social marketing objectives included in HP2020: Health Communications and Health Information Technology (HC/HIT) Objectives 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3. Assess the methods and results of scientific efforts used for establishing baseline measures for each of these three objectives. Identify and evaluate proposals for future strategies and activities to achieve each of the three social marketing objectives.