Meeting notes

"Methods and Social Marketing" Meeting, November 28th, 2008

Kick-off meeting, November 08, Paris

Together with Public Private Partnership, Involvement of Political Representatives and Scientific Evaluation and Dissemination, Methods & Social Marketing (MSM) is one of the four pillars of the EPODE methodology.

The specific committee of the EPODE European Network chaired by Prof. Luis Moreno (Zaragoza University) held its kick-off meeting on November 28th, 2008 (picture). This meeting gathered scientists, European coordinators of EPODE programmes, public health professionals as well as the coordinating team of the EEN to discuss and work on the social marketing approach within EPODE.

Until 2011, the aim of this committee is to develop recommendations to support and structure the practice of EPODE-like social marketing approaches in other European countries.

During this first meeting, Ms Sandrine Raffin and Dr Jean-Michel Borys (EPODE and EEN Co-Directors) presented the EPODE social marketing and networking approach. By putting into practice international and national recommendations, EPODE has built its strategy from evidence-based research data (e.g. FLVS study and others, and on-going experiments), multidisciplinary expertise and experience from the field. The EPODE methodology (now implemented in more than 200 cities across Europe) aims to identify barriers and levers for the adoption of healthier lifestyles at the community level. EPODE networking techniques, based on a sustainable and across-the-board mobilisation of multiple local stakeholders, was described as a system enabling ‘micro-environment' changes within the ecological niche, for healthier behaviours of children and their families.

From a preliminary review of EPODE-similar initiatives, Prof. Moreno chaired discussions during which several critical points were stressed, fostering further applied investigations including: relevancy of a well-framed audience segmentation, consideration of multiple forces influencing behaviours such as media, fashions, idols, and strategies to make "healthy choices, easy choices vs high costs behaviours"...

From a broader mapping and analysis of EPODE and EPODE-similar networking and social marketing frameworks, this committee will aim to develop concrete guidelines for local professionals (practical, supportive and feasible) as well as recommendations for politicians and researchers to raise political and scientific legitimacy. The next meeting of this committee is planed on April the 22nd in Zaragoza.

References

• Commission of European Communities, 2007, White paper on « A Strategy for Europe on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesity related health issues » click here
  
  
• WHO, 2004, "Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health" click here

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