When it comes to influencing people’s behaviours, the public sector seems to be lagging behind private firms, particularly in the use of market research data and segmentation of societal groups. Modernizing the way the health community speaks and communicates about health is an imperative felt by many professionals. How can this be achieved? The topic inspired a very interesting debate during a World Leadership Dialogue on the 13th of October 2020, organized jointly by the Regions for Health Network, the WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of NCDs, EUPHA, and the Lancet Public Health.
Modernizing health communications
When private companies seek to open or expand markets for their products, they rely on data related to their target groups. Sometimes, behaviors and products may produce unintended negative consequences for health, for instance by promoting unhealthy diets. Based on this observation, Francesco Zambon, RHN Coordinator, asked the panel the following questions: could the same data and techniques, as well as proper tailoring of messages to the general public, also be used by health professionals? Are health professionals aware of their existence and able to use them at their own advantage?
In response, Joao Breda, Head of the WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases based in Moscow, highlighted how digital communications can be used to promote healthy behaviors: “We can use digital marketing for health education and health promotion, but in a different way compared to the private sector. There are new tools available that could be used, for instance, artificial intelligence. However, to make full use of AI, more data and evidence needs to be collected.”
Dr Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, Director of the Division of Country Health Policies and Systems at WHO/Europe, and former President of EUPHA, emphasized the importance of communication skills for today’s public health professionals. The current international context has demonstrated that the public health workforce needs to get used to being under the public eye, ready to be challenged and constantly under scrutiny. This means that public health work must be transparent, and professionals must have the soft skills to listen to and empathize with the public. It is crucial to understand how parameters of public health discourse are changing, and misinformation campaigns require a very different skillset to avoid confusing the public.
Dr Muscat also reflected on the important role of one the four flagship priorities of the WHO European Programme of work (EPW): behavioral and cultural insights – which help understand how people are taking on public health messages. It is only on the basis of behavioural studies that the health approach may be fine-tuned to ensure that the messages put forward will land on fertile ground.
Dineke Zeegers Paget, Executive Director of EUPHA - the European Public Health Association, addressed the engagement of young professionals - our future workforce - in a modern, enticing public health discourse. Firstly, she noted, public health organizations should never stop innovating communication tools: for example, EUPHA has started youth gaming groups as a way of involving people in public health. Secondly, involving the younger generation means including them in the decision-making process. Thirdly, “you are never too old to learn new ways of communicating”: why not, for instance, use the same tools applied by industrial and commercial companies and be inspired by their knowledge and capacities?
Brigitte Van Der Zanden (Euregion Meuse Rhine), Managing director of the Foundation euPrevent, further expanded on the above issues by describing a participatory project implemented by the Euregion Meuse-Rhine (EMR): in February 2019, two citizen summits were organised to collect the Citizen’s view on health, in particular on three topics – equity, the participatory approach and human resources for health. The outcome of these citizen summits were then used as input during the WHO RHN – CoR “European Committee of the Regions” Annual Conference on health which took place in June 2019.