Techniques
like consumer research, targeted marketing and keeping an eye on the
competition — long employed in the business world — are
some of the key elements of the social marketing approach to building healthier
neighborhoods, says Edward W. Maibach, M.P.H., Ph.D., of the National Cancer
Institute.
“At the heart of each of these active-living community objectives is
the need to influence and support people’s behavior — including
consumers, developers, policy-makers and others,” Maibach writes in
the September issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.
Changing behavior isn’t so easy, however, when the
environment prevents individuals from making choices that add physical
activity to their lives.
“For instance, only 4 percent of the nation’s roads are served
by transit, and fewer than 50 percent of Americans live within a quarter-mile
of a transit stop. This may explain why nearly 75 percent of all excursions
less than one mile are made in an automobile,” Maibach explains.
Those who want to transform communities into places that encourage more physical
activity should do the research to understand how changes might appeal to residents
and developers alike, he says.
Organizations also need to discover what barriers stand in the way of transformation
and what factors compete with a more active environment, and identify ways
to create mutual benefits for residents and developers alike.
Maibach notes, for instance, that consumer demand for active-living
communities is currently outpacing developers’ willingness to create
them. Developers say that zoning and other local ordinances are important
barriers to building
these communities.
Techniques like polls and write-in campaigns can also help create demand for
these communities among policy-makers, he adds.
Maibach says that federal, state and large nongovernmental organizations are
best placed to take advantage of these techniques, since they have the most
money to do the necessary market research. He cites the National High Blood
Pressure Education Program and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids as successes
in social marketing.
