Social marketing contribution in public health interventions for the improvement of nutritional habits: The Greek reality

Introduction: During the last decade countries like the U.K., the U.S.A, New Zealand and Australia have made respectable investments in Social Marketing Programmes to reduce non-communicable diseases’ and obesity rates, considering that public health tries to create an environment that promotes health and as social marketing works at an individual level, there is a need for public health and social marketing synergy.

Objectives: To explore the current public health nutritional interventions in Greece and the contribution of social marketing to them.

Research Design: Primary data were collected by means of in-depth semi-structured interviews with people from Greek NGO’s, the State and the Food Industry, who design and run nutritional interventions. Secondary data on public health and social marketing nutritional interventions were collected via the Internet and journals.

Results: Greek nutritional interventions are based on communication strategies, so they are not social marketing programmes, regardless the fact that many interventions have a lot in common with foreign social marketing campaigns. The difference is the absence of primary research and pre-testing, which could help to gain insight of target audiences. Also, there is minimal funding and low capacity and capability on public health and the social marketing field and the interventions are non-systematic.

Conclusion: The forces that dictate consumption patterns are far stronger than the efforts promoting healthy eating. There is however, reliance that social marketing programmes could compete with commercial marketing of unhealthy foodstuffs with better funding and long-term interventions, and lead to the development of healthier eating patterns within a public health policy context.

Impact: Public health specialists will understand the use of social marketing techniques in public health for evidence-based interventions and the importance of programmes based on local culture and needs, along with influences from international practices, directives and cooperation.