Earlier this week, Public Health England launched their new campaign called ‘One You’, aiming to address preventable disease in adults. They state that over 40% of all deaths in England are related to people’s health behaviours and lifestyle choices, to include inactivity, poor diet, smoking, alcohol consumption, poor sleeping habits and stress. They add that these cost the NHS more than £11 billion every year.
Life expectancy has increased considerably so we can all expect to live longer. However, the years we spend in good health has not changed much and we spend our later years living in ill health and with disabilities. Public Health England state if we live a healthy lifestyle in middle-age, we can double our chances of being healthy at the age of 70.
Several people have criticised this £3.5 million campaign as being futile and merely stating the obvious. It does, however, offer a joined-up approach to the various modifiable risk factors that impact on so many chronic diseases, and offer practical strategies for adopting a healthier lifestyle. It is also targeting those in middle-age for the first time, and complements their Change4Life campaign which targets families and obesity. Please visit https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou#Dj6liDZxUuMuAiUf.97 for more information and to take the One You quiz.
The One You campaign is being promoted on the internet, on television, and through a national high street poster campaign. It would be interesting to see how effective other behaviour change approaches such as Making Every Contact Count have been, and how the various different campaigns and strategies have overcome actual or perceived barriers to healthy lifestyles. Are national media campaigns more effective than face-to-face behaviour change approaches in promoting the adoption of healthier lifestyles and positive health behaviours? The answer will of course be that a multi-pronged attack is needed. Maybe we could look to Finland and Canada for answers as they have transformed their societies for the better as this old article from The Guardian shows. http://www.theguardian.com/befit/story/0,15652,1385645,00.html
One strategy I recently came across was the brilliant idea of ‘activity equivalent’ calorie labelling on food and drinks from the Royal Society for Public Health https://www.rsph.org.uk/en/policy-and-projects/areas-of-work/activity-equivalent-labelling/index.cfm . We are all used to the traffic light system for key nutrition information on food packaging, and with two in three UK adults being obese or overweight, this seems like such a logical thing to do. Did you know, for example, your standard chicken and bacon sandwich from the supermarket would take almost an hour and 20 minutes to walk off, or that a packet of crisps or standard chocolate bar would take 30 and 40 minutes respectively to walk off. It might just help. Please follow the link to the RSPH article for more information on this great idea.
