Selling Health to the Public
نویسندگان
چکیده
Let me confess at the outset that I feel uncomfortable with the title given to my presentation, "Selling Health to the Public," and that I feel equally uncomfortable with such terms as, "marketing health," "the health marketplace," or any others that equate the health area with the marketplace. These terms have become quite popular in recent years because the presumed success of Madison Avenue and the methods and gimmicks of commercial sales promotion easily tempt health professionals to adopt these same methods and gimmicks in the cause of health education. I feel uncomfortable with these terms and with what they seem to suggest for health education because I believe that they threaten to lead the health professions into ineffective and even self-defeating approaches. There are many critical differences between selling commercial goods and services to consumers on the one hand and selling people on using health services and healthful living habits on the other. I would like to point out just a few of the most glaring differences. The single and possibly most important difference lies in the purposes pursued in the two areas. In the commercial area, the focus is generally on selling goods and services, but in the health area, the focus is (or should be) on persuading people to make changes, some of them rather profound ones, in their living habits and practices of which the utilization of health services is only one aspect and the purchase of specific goods plays only a very small role. Thus, health professionals are concerned with inducing the public to maintain balanced diets, to abstain from cigarettes, to be physically active, to take proper personal hygiene and environmental sanitation measures, to volunteer for periodic medical checkups and disease screening, to adhere to medical regimens when they are ill, and so forth. Many of these actions require people to change, often
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تاریخ انتشار 2011