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This paper presents the results of the qualitative phase of Healthy Foundations, a study that groups people according to their motivations to live healthily or otherwise, their lifestyles, and the circumstances that affect this. These segments are ‘Health Conscious Realists’, ‘Balanced Compensators’, ‘Live for Todays’, ‘Unconfident Fatalists’ and ‘Hedonistic Immortals’. The aim was to explore people’s attitudes and motivations to live healthily or otherwise and the targeted healthcare interventions appropriate for each segment. The qualitative phase involved two strands: (i) focus groups and immersion in-depth interviews and (ii) video ethnographic ‘pen portraits’. It provides robust insight into the five segments’ motivations and behaviour and how these are constructed within and influenced by the wider environment. It also enabled the segments to give their views of and design appropriate interventions aligned to their individual requirements, lifestyles and structural environments. It demonstrates the usefulness of the qualitative approach to health segmentations and enhances the case for methodological pluralism, and a critical perspective, to enable development of health-related behaviour change interventions and policy more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses a study which compares and investigates health engagement among adolescents, young adults, and older adults in England. The study has utilized Healthy Foundations study in 2008 as baseline. It concludes that young adults tend to feel less involved and offer lesser priority in their health compared with older adults and adolescents.

Social marketing is being increasingly used within the UK health system to address a range of health inequality issues. The Department of Health for England plans to increase the use of social marketing at both national and local levels. However, this can only be achieved if the correct resources are in place. Currently we have a shortage of skilled social marketing practitioners within the UK. The Department of Health is therefore looking to academia to help increase capacity and skills to fill this gap. Presently, capacity and capability within the academic system are limited. This article is aimed at promoting debate about how academic capacity is grown within the UK. It also aims to reflect the main challenges we are facing in the UK, which may or may not be reflected in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social marketing has a key role to play in helping to shape the choices people make supporting the decisions actions that determine their health well-being. These choices have a broad impact on society affecting not only the quality of life of individuals communities the cost of public services but also the performance of business the economy. In this article we discuss how the impact of behavior choices the interventions that support them can be evaluated. We briefly set out the problems of measuring the cost effectiveness of behavior choice interventions propose an approach to these challenges. The article illustrates how a pragmatic layered framework for evaluating cost effectiveness can be developed applied in five fields in which positive behavior choices can prevent illness (alcohol misuse smoking obesity coronary vascular disease mental health). The review identifies the value of a quality adjusted life year in each of these fields uses these estimates to generate "return on investment" for typical projects at different levels in society (individual family health care services other public sector private sector wider society). Finally we propose a consensus conference to develop apply such a framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN late 1988 and early 1989, the Health Education Authority ran an Aids/HIV public education press campaign. The decision to use press advertising was prompted by a growing awareness of the potentially dysfunctional effects, for the maintenance of public concern about Aids, of on/off bursts of high profile advertising followed by periods of apparent inactiv ity. Additionally, it was felt that the press might be best suited to the effective transmission of certain key pieces of information. Efforts to evaluate the campaign therefore paid close attention to the extent to which these goals were attained, and the findings are presented to guide future strategies in terms of optimal choice of media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aims: In 2010, the English Department of Health launched a radical new public health strategy, which sees individual factors, such as self-esteem, as the key to improving all aspects of young people's health. This article compares the strength of association between key adolescent health outcomes and a range of individual and social factors, Methods: All participants aged 12-15 in the nationally representative 2008 Healthy Foundations survey were included. Six individual factors related to self-esteem, confidence and personal responsibility, and seven social factors related to family, peers, school and local area were investigated. Single-factor and multivariable logistic regression models were used to calculate the association between these factors and seven health outcomes (self-reported general health, physical activity, healthy eating, weight, smoking, alcohol intake, illicit drug use). Odds ratios were adjusted for gender, age and deprivation., Results: Individual factors such as self-esteem were associated with general health, physical activity and healthy eating. However, the influence of family, peers, school and local community appear to be equally important for these outcomes and more important for smoking, drug use and healthy weight., Conclusion: Self-esteem interventions alone are unlikely to be successful in improving adolescent health, particularly in tackling obesity and reducing substance misuse.