This week PR Week revealed that the Department of Health’s comms budget would be slashed to pay for improved care for the elderly. Downing Street sources said the PM’s pledge to provide personal care at home for over 350,000 of the elderly would be paid for by cuts of £400m to the department’s comms budget and ‘lower priority’ research and IT.
While the Department of Health (DH) hasn’t confirmed the scale of the possible comms budget cuts, there is certainly plenty there to be clawed back. DH is the largest single user of the Central Office of Information, the government’s media and advertising buyer. Recent major campaigns have included the Change for Life movement to tackle obesity and the Smokefree England and Know Your Limits tobacco and alcohol campaigns.
With such a massive agenda, covering every part of society, it’s not surprising that DH is the busiest government advertiser. But the size of the prize, if the campaigns are successful, is huge.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham is prioritising preventative interventions, such as health improvement campaigns, as a means to help the NHS live within its means in the future. With the spiralling demands of ‘lifestyle diseases’ – diabetes, obesity, the effects of a sedentary lifestyle, smoking and drink – investment in health promotion now should save the NHS billions in a generation’s time.
So with the need for tough spending decisions now, the DH comms team may have to take some new approaches to deliver the desired health improvements with massively reduced budgets.
The scope is certainly there to achieve more ‘bang for buck’. With many primary care trusts (PCTs) already delivering targeted, effective, successful health promotion campaigns, more joint working between PCTs and better alignment and sharing of resources with DH could deliver a greater impact at reduced cost.
There are also some great examples of social marketing campaigns that have made a real difference in local communities. The most successful approaches focus not just on communications, but on using audience insights to make health promotion services more relevant and accessible to the people they seek to serve. There are lots of examples on the National Social Marketing Centre’s case study database.
You could argue that less reliance on big advertising campaigns, greater use of social marketing, less duplication and more synergy between PCTs and with DH are all things that should be happening anyway. The need for spending cuts might just force the issue.
Facing up to cuts in health comms
This week PR Week revealed that the Department of Health’s comms budget would be slashed to pay for improved care for the elderly. Downing Street sources said the PM’s pledge to provide personal care at home for over 350,000 of the elderly would be paid for by cuts of £400m to the department’s comms budget and ‘lower priority’ research and IT.
While the Department of Health (DH) hasn’t confirmed the scale of the possible comms budget cuts, there is certainly plenty there to be clawed back. DH is the largest single user of the Central Office of Information, the government’s media and advertising buyer. Recent major campaigns have included the Change for Life movement to tackle obesity and the Smokefree England and Know Your Limits tobacco and alcohol campaigns.
With such a massive agenda, covering every part of society, it’s not surprising that DH is the busiest government advertiser. But the size of the prize, if the campaigns are successful, is huge.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham is prioritising preventative interventions, such as health improvement campaigns, as a means to help the NHS live within its means in the future. With the spiralling demands of ‘lifestyle diseases’ – diabetes, obesity, the effects of a sedentary lifestyle, smoking and drink – investment in health promotion now should save the NHS billions in a generation’s time.
So with the need for tough spending decisions now, the DH comms team may have to take some new approaches to deliver the desired health improvements with massively reduced budgets.
The scope is certainly there to achieve more ‘bang for buck’. With many primary care trusts (PCTs) already delivering targeted, effective, successful health promotion campaigns, more joint working between PCTs and better alignment and sharing of resources with DH could deliver a greater impact at reduced cost.
There are also some great examples of social marketing campaigns that have made a real difference in local communities. The most successful approaches focus not just on communications, but on using audience insights to make health promotion services more relevant and accessible to the people they seek to serve. There are lots of examples on the National Social Marketing Centre’s case study database.
You could argue that less reliance on big advertising campaigns, greater use of social marketing, less duplication and more synergy between PCTs and with DH are all things that should be happening anyway. The need for spending cuts might just force the issue.