Creating demand for better health by using social marketing techniques

The most significant environmental change to support people who want to give up smoking is the legislation to ban smoking in public places. Following Scotland in March 2006, and Wales and Northern Ireland in April 2007, England moves one step closer to being smoke free on 1 July 2007, when it becomes illegal to smoke in almost every enclosed public place and workplace. Social marketing will be used to support this health promoting policy and will become more prominent in the design of health promotion campaigns of the future. Social marketing is not a new approach to promoting health but its adoption by the Government does represent a paradigm shift in the challenge to change public opinion and social norms. As a result some behaviours, like smoking or excessive alcohol consumption, will no longer be socially acceptable. The Department of Health has decided that social marketing should be used in England to guide all future health promotion efforts directed at achieving behavioural goals. This paradigm shift was announced in Chapter 2 of the “Choosing health” White Paper with its emphasis on the consumer, noting that a wide range of lifestyle choices are marketed to people, although health as a commodity itself has not been marketed. The DoH has an internal social marketing development unit to integrate social marketing principles into its work and ensure that providers deliver. The National Centre for Social Marketing has funding to provide ongoing support, to build capacity and capability in the workforce. This article describes the distinguishing features of the social marketing approach. It seeks to answer some questions. Is this really a new idea, a paradigm shift, or simply a change in terminology? What do the marketing principles offer that is new, or are they merely familiar ideas repackaged in marketing jargon? Will these principles be more effective than current health promotion practice and, if so, how does it work? Finally, what are the implications for community pharmacy?

Reducing patient mortality in hospitals:the role of human resource management

Developing effective health care organizations is increasingly complex as a result of demographic changes, globalization, and developments in medicine. This study examines the potential contribution of organizational behavior theory and research by investigating the relationship between systems of human resource management (HRM) practices and effectiveness of patient care in hospitals. Relatively little research has been conducted to explore these issues in health care settings. In a sample of 52 hospitals in England, we examine the relationship between the HRM system and health care outcome. Specifically, we study the association between high performance HRM policies and practices and standardized patient mortality rates. The research reveals that, after controlling for prior mortality and other potentially confounding factors such as the ratio of doctors to patients, greater use of a complementary set of HRM practices has a statistically and practically significant relationship with patient mortality. The findings suggest that managers and policy makers should focus sharply on improving the functioning of relevant HR management systems in health care organizations as one important means by which to improve patient care. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Patients' perceptions and experiences of transitions in diabetes care: a longitudinal qualitative study

Objective To examine patients' perceptions and experiences over time of the devolvement of diabetes care/reviews from secondary to primary health-care settings. Design Repeat in-depth interviews with 20 patients over 4 years. Participants and setting Twenty type 2 diabetes patients recruited from primary- and secondary-care settings across Lothian, Scotland. Results Patients' views about their current diabetes care were informed by their previous service contact. The devolvement of diabetes care/reviews to general practice was presented as a 'mixed blessing'. Patients gained reassurance from their perception that receiving practice-based care/reviews signified that their diabetes was well-controlled. However, they also expressed resentment that, by achieving good control, they received what they saw as inferior care and/or less-frequent reviews to others with poorer control. While patients tended to regard GPs as having adequate expertise to conduct their practice-based reviews, they were more ambivalent about nurses taking on this role. Opportunities to receive holistic care in general practice were not always realized due to patients seeing health-care professionals for diabetes management to whom they would not normally present for other health issues. Conclusions It is important to educate patients about their care pathways, and to reassure them that frequency of reviews depends more on clinical need than location of care and that similar care guidelines are followed in hospital clinics and general practice. A patients' history of service contact may need to be taken into account in future studies of service satisfaction.

The effectiveness of teams in organizations:a meta-analysis

The proposed meta-analysis of 61 independent samples aims to identify whether, and if so under what conditions, team working in organizations is related to organizational effectiveness. Team working had a significant though small positive relationship with both performance outcomes and staff attitudes. Our contingency analyses further showed that team working had a stronger relationship with performance outcomes if accompanied by complementary HR measures and in non-health-care settings. Finally, we found that team working is more strongly related to attitudinal outcomes in Sociotechnical Systems and health-care settings. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Erythrocyte antioxidant protection of rose hips (Rosa spp.)

Rose hips are popular in health promoting products as the fruits contain high content of bioactive compounds. The aim of this study was to investigate whether health benefits are attributable to ascorbic acid, phenols, or other rose-hip-derived compounds. Freeze-dried powder of rose hips was preextracted with metaphosphoric acid and the sample was then sequentially eluted on a C18 column. The degree of amelioration of oxidative damage was determined in an erythrocyte in vitro bioassay by comparing the effects of a reducing agent on erythrocytes alone or on erythrocytes pretreated with berry extracts. The maximum protection against oxidative stress, 59.4 ± 4.0% (mean standard deviation), was achieved when incubating the cells with the first eluted meta-phosphoric extract. Removal of ascorbic acid from this extract increased the protection against oxidative stress to 67.9 ± 1.9% . The protection from the 20% and 100% methanol extracts was 20.8 ± 8.2% and 5.0 ± 3.2% , respectively. Antioxidant uptake was confirmed by measurement of catechin by HPLC-ESI-MS in the 20% methanol extract. The fact that all sequentially eluted extracts studied contributed to protective effects on the erythrocytes indicates that rose hips contain a promising level of clinically relevant antioxidant protection. © Copyright 2012 C. Widén et al.