Discuss the effectiveness of one or more health promotion programmes.

Refer to the paper 2 assessment criteria when awarding marks. These can be found under the “Your tests” tab > supplemental materials.

The command term “discuss” requires candidates to offer a considered review of one or more health promotion programmes.

Health promotion programmes are an attempt to promote health behaviour. Health promotion programmes are those initiatives designed to assist people in gaining control over and improving their own health. These may be public or a government programmes, or may be privately sponsored. In addition, these programmes may be developed on an individual, local, national, or international level.

Examples of health promotion programmes may include, but are not limited to:

• food labelling programmes
• stress reduction programmes such as MBSR or yoga
• health education campaigns such as the TRUTH anti-tobacco campaign
• public health campaigns designed to change beliefs and attitudes.

Relevant research may include, but is not limited to:

• Peckmann and Reibling’s (2006) study of the effectiveness of fear campaigns
• Yee et al.’s (2006) study of effectiveness of strategies to change behaviours related to obesity
• Sly et al.’s (2002) survey on community based anti-smoking promotion among teens
• Holm’s (2002) survey on the efficiency of health campaigns
• Schum and Gould’s (2007) study of why health campaigns are effective.

Critical discussion may include, but is not limited to:

• Supporting and contradictory evidence of the programme’s success
• Social engineering eg taxes and/or subsidies upon products such as sugar, tobacco, or alcohol
• methodological concerns in measuring outcomes of the programme (e.g. small samples, no control group, no random allocation of participants and possibility of researcher bias).
• cultural and ethical considerations in programme implementation
• assumptions and biases
• areas of uncertainty.
• short-term versus long-term efficacy
• age and gender considerations

Question 9 was a rather popular question on the exam. Most candidates discussed relevant health promotion programmes, and some just provided anecdotal evidence of programmes that they were aware of. Some health promotion programmes addressed were the following:

• promoting healthy eating and exercise in schools (2004)
• programmes based on social learning theory (for example, the Sabido method to encourage safe sex practices)
• Project SMART (US), promoting positive health decisions in middle school aged children.
• Challenge! (Australia) school-based pedometer program promoting healthy lifestyles among Aboriginal people