Healthwatch Manchester have spent time over the last few months working with different community groups reviewing two separate public health campaigns.
The Little Swaps, Big Changes(LSBC) and Start for Life(SFL) campaigns are national health drives which aim to support the public making changes in their lives.
- The LSBC campaign promotes making healthy food swaps to encourage weight loss and in turn a heartier lifestyle.
- SFL is an informational campaign which was created to support parents in deciding at what age they should begin weaning their babies.
Healthwatch Manchester contacted the Sugar Group, based at the Kath Locke Centre in Hulme, to ask the members if they were available to give their opinion and feedback on the LSBC health campaign. This is a diabetic support group with whom they thought would closely identify with the campaigns main messaged. They also contacted a leading family support charity Home-Start Manchester to enquire about working with a group of parents in reviewing the SFL campaign.
Healthwatch Manchester found that neither group of respondents were familiar with either of the campaigns and the majority of respondents had not seen or heard anything about either campaign within the last three months.
However, the SFL campaign attracted more positive feedback from respondents than the LSBC campaign about the imagery used and its clarity.
In summary:
- The LSBC campaign was neither accessible nor particularly useful.
- The SFL campaign was not accessible but found to be useful.
They recommended that in future, campaigns need to be tested for the usefulness of their information before distribution. Moreover, in order to enable the usefulness and accessibility of campaign materials, this testing and sense checking needs to involve cohorts of the target demographics.
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