|  | Feature: Healthy Living Move for Health | No.49 January 2007 |
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Promoting Active Lifestyles in New Zealand Jenny Ross |
Introduction For some time, New Zealand has been undertaking programs to encourage people to be active. This work has been accelerating since the late 1990s with the inception of the national Push Play campaign. The campaign is multifaceted and includes social marketing and supporting programs. The national budget for programs aimed at increasing participation for the year July 2006 to June 2007 was approximately NZ$38 million and the social marketing campaign budget from July 2005 to the end of 2006 was NZ$3.7 million. The social marketing campaign includes the use of media to increase the awareness of the health enhancing physical activity message as well as to increase participation. In addition to media activities, there are programs to back up the campaign across a number of settings including primary health care, workplace and school settings. Such initiatives are in keeping with the recommendations for countries in the World Health Organisation’s Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health. The programs and social marketing initiatives were begun in the 1990s by a government agency, the Hillary Commission, and were inherited and further developed by SPARC (Sport and Recreation New Zealand), the government agency that superseded the Hillary Commission. Social Marketing Campaign The Push Play campaign has a slogan (“Push Play. 30 minutes a day”) and a logo, and uses a variety of media to convey messages including television, radio (including ethnic stations), print (including newspapers and magazines), internet (using a website), billboards and brochures (including translations for different ethnic groups), direct marketing, merchandising and resources. Push Play Day – Push Play Nation New Zealand’s version of the World Health Organisation’s Move for Health day is the Push Play Day and it is celebrated in November. Push Play Day has been running since 2001 and has involved promotions, events and opportunities for advocacy regarding health enhancing physical activity. In 2006, a month of promotional activities branded Push Play Nation preceded Push Play Day. People were encouraged via television adverts to sign up with a celebrity to a tailored activity program and receive program mail outs and weekly motivational e-mails. In addition, each household received a card promoting Push Play Day and instructions of how to sign up for prizes (sponsored products including bicycles and sports bags) and a Push Play-branded balloon to tie to their household mail box to celebrate the day. So Push Play Day dawned with many of the nation’s mail boxes festooned with green balloons. Direct marketing An example of direct marketing is a dog-walking promotion to be trialled in a municipality. In New Zealand, dogs must be relicensed by their owners every year. Municipalities write to the dog owners regarding this relicensing and SPARC is going to send a letter out to the dogs along with the relicensing information. The dogs will be encouraged to take their owners for a walk and included in the letter will be a tag for their dog collars saying “Walk me for 30 minutes a day”. This letter will be followed up six and twelve months later to see if dog owners have become more active. Supporting Resources An example of resources supporting the marketing was the distribution of “activators” as part of the 2005 iteration of the Push Play campaign. “Activators” were resources made of card that helped people to find and chose physical activities that they could easily accommodate in their lifestyles. The “activators” had a magnetic backing so that people could stick them to their refrigerators. The “activators” were available at the checkout counters of a supermarket chain and the conveyor belts at the checkout counters were imprinted with the “Push Play. 30 minutes a day” message and a reminder to customers to ask for their “activator”. In addition, there was media advertising and in-store shelf advertising directing people to pick up the “activators” at the supermarkets. 396,000 “activators” were distributed, representing approximately one for every ten New Zealanders. An on-line version of the “activator” was also made available. Framing the marketing to target the inactive In 2003, SPARC undertook some segmentation research to ensure the campaign influenced those people who were partially active but not undertaking enough regular activity to enhance their health (this group represented 45% of the adult population). The research, focussing on both nutrition and physical activity, was undertaken in partnership with the Cancer Society and involved investigating a combination of behavioural, demographic and psychological variables. The target group (those that were not active enough) were divided into six groups using an iterative process and statistical analysis and the 2005 and 2006 iteration of the Push Play campaign was designed to reach out to a number of these six groups. So media messages and images were designed to influence segmented groups of inactive people. What is happening to participation? One criticism of social marketing campaigns is that they only increase peoples’ awareness that active lifestyles are important rather than change participation behaviour. It is true that awareness has increased with the Push Play campaign but participation is also rising. There have been significant increases in awareness of the message (30% in 1999 and 52% in 2002), in awareness of the logo (14% in 1999 and 52% in 2002) and in the intention to be more active (1.8% in 1999 and 9.45% in 2002). Alongside the increased awareness, there was a 3% increase in adult participation in sport and physical recreation from 1997 to 2001. Increases were also seen in the proportion of active New Zealanders over the period from May 2003 (45% active) to March 2006 (62% active) from a continuous weekly telephone monitoring survey. Programs in different settings There are a number of national Push Play-branded programs supporting the social marketing campaign and they address a number of settings including health care, workplace and school settings and demographic groups, for example Maori (the indigenous population of New Zealand). Health Care Setting In the health care setting, there is the Green Prescription (GRx) program in which primary health care professionals prescribe exercise and physical activity to patients with stable medical conditions. These patients are followed up with motivational telephone calls. The program began in 1999 and is ongoing; in 2000 over 50% of primary health care doctors were prescribing the GRx to patients. School Setting In the school setting, there is a fundamental movement skills program, Active Movement, aimed at enhancing activity in early childhood education settings. For the five to twelve year olds, there is the Active Schools program which includes a toolkit of cross-curricular resources for teachers, Active Schools facilitators who provide assistance for schools to develop their activity programs, and a resource for fostering the culture of activity at schools. Indigenous People’s Program Maori programs aimed at enhancing their participation in exercise, recreation and sport began in 1989 and, since 1997, the He Oranga Poutama program has been running. This program involves kaiwhakahaere (coordinators) who facilitate Maori physical activity through a combination of information provision, advocacy, coordination, capability development and the provision of on-going traditional and culturally appropriate activities and events for Maori. Concluding comments Features of New Zealand’s promotion of active lifestyles are that there has been a comprehensive social marketing campaign in place since 1999 and a suite of programs and initiatives supporting the campaign addressing a number of settings and demographic groups. Bibliography Bauman, A., McLean, G., Hurdle, D., Walker, S., Boyd, J., van Aalst, H. & Carr H. (2003). Evaluation of the national “Push Play” campaign in New Zealand – creating population awareness of physical activity. NZ Medical J;116,:1179. Deloitte. Sport and Recreation New Zealand. Review of the performance of SPARC during the 2002-2006 period. Wellington: Deloitte; 2006. www.sparc.org.nz. Accessed 18 November, 2006. Ministry of Health. Healthy Eating – Healthy Action. What’s happening now. www.moh.govt.nz Accessed 10 November, 2006. Physical Activity Taskforce. Physical Activity Taskforce Report. Wellington: Hillary Commission; 1998. SPARC. SPARC Facts. Results of the New Zealand Sports and Physical Activity surveys (1997-2001). Wellington: SPARC; 2003. SPARC. An introduction to active movement. Koringa Hihiko. Wellington: SPARC; 2004. SPARC. Active Schools Plan. Wellington: SPARC; 2004. SPARC. Green Prescription and He Oranga Poutama. www.sparc.org.nz. Accessed 25 October, 2006. SPARC. Annual Report for the year ended 30 June 2006. Wellington: SPARC; 2006. Sullivan C, Oakden J, Young J, Butcher H, & Lawson R. (2003) Obstacles to action. A study of New Zealanders’ physical activity and nutrition. Wellington: SPARC. World Health Organization. Global Strategy on diet, physical activity and health. Geneva: World Health Organisation; 2004. Contact Dr. Jenny Ross Lincoln University Canterbury, New Zealand ross@lincoln.ac.nz Dr Ross has also been a Board Member of Sport and Recreation New Zealand since 2001. http://www.icsspe.org/portal/index.php?w=1&z=5 Promoting Active Lifestyles in New Zealand Jenny Ross