What can PSA’s do to help limit America’s cancer risk?
Is anyone in America unaware that cancer is a significant risk to our lives? If we don’t know someone personally affected, we’ve read about Patrick Swayze or Michael Douglas.
September played host to national awareness for at least five different forms of cancer. This month is devoted to National Breast Cancer Awareness. But even as the National Football League players do their part, racing about the field in pink cleats and throwing pink footballs, we are still confronted with the disturbing fact:
Cancer is killing one in four Americans as we speak.
So if awareness isn’t the issue, what is? A recent Washington Post article grappled with an answer: Bad habits. The article leads with the astonishing statistic from the American Cancer Society that a whopping two-thirds of the 550,000 cancers deaths each year is linked to lifestyle choices: poor diet, inactivity, obesity, and smoking.
Logically, it’s such a no-brainer. Why would anyone in their right mind “choose” to increase their risk of developing cancer? If there are simple steps that make sense to adopt, for a whole host of health reasons, including cancer, why wouldn’t we?
Unfortunately, for most of us, the steps aren’t quite that easy: losing weight, not eating red and processed meat, cutting down on the cocktails and, yes, limiting cell phone use. None of it is fun or effortless and certainly not perceived as simple little lifestyle adjustments.
Behavior change is hard and rarely comes from increased awareness of a problem or even its solution. Yet too many of us – health professionals, ad agencies and organizers of education campaigns – set the objective with doing just that: raising awareness.
But our objective needs to go beyond awareness. Altering habits is a gradual, complicated process, which requires understanding the motivators, barriers and influences in lives. Making people aware that they should just say no to red meat won’t work any more effectively than “Just Say No” did with drugs. We need to understand how to connect the dots of influences in people’s day-to-day lives to help make the “right” behavior choices more doable and actionable. Too often the longer “potential” outcomes just aren’t as persuasive as the here and now, real world factors.
The good news is that the media is ready to help. In a recent national survey, television media directors said cancer was, hands-down, the most important issue for their stations to support through public service advertising. Let’s just make sure we use the air time wisely. Let’s be sure to do the “heavy lifting” in our homework to get the public service messages right. Let’s make sure they do more than simply raise awareness.
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This discussion is a fascinating one to me.
“Everyone already knows that breast cancer is a significant health risk.” Really? Before Sunday, I’m not so sure that statement was true for my nieces and their friends who are in their teens and twenties. They are typically more focused on shorter-term concerns.
“Our objective needs to go beyond awareness.” I agree completely. But why does that mean that maintaining awareness isn’t still important? And, couldn’t it be possible that the NFL’s media blitz, even if it was light on on-air behavior change-related messaging, caused some women (and the men who love them) to remember to schedule their mammogram or get back on track with their diet or exercise routine?
In fact, for those who were motivated by all the pink on the field to check out the NFL web site, there’s a link to a pretty complete section (http://www.nfl.com/pink) that encourages plenty of behavior changes: schedule your mammogram and sign up for a yearly reminder; eat right; stay active; donate to the cause etc.
The NFL is in the entertainment business; they are not a public health agency. They chose to use their tremendous marketing influence to help make some noise about breast cancer. Could they have included more behavior change messaging in the broadcasts? I’m sure they could have. Breast cancer is a complex issue, and there’s always more that can be and should be done. But I think it’s more productive to be grateful for this very successful promotional program that has gotten the country talking about breast cancer prevention and early detection once again. The NFL provided a big spark for continued action, and the smart public health and advocacy organizations will look at how they can build off of and complement this effort with additional behavior change-focused initiatives.
Sounds like we agree, to agree! It is great that the NFL can “do their part.” Awareness is unquestionably important. It’s just, unfortunately, not enough.
Thanks for a well-written suggestion about the difficulties of changing life styles. My experience shows that most people don’t change their behavior simply because they are AWARE of an imminent threat. They change their behavior only after being CONFRONTED by the threat. For example the villagers living at the bottom of abig muddy slope may be very aware of the risk of a mud slide because experts have made them aware and have even suggested strongly that the residents should move. But the residents don’t attempt to move until a huge, slithery, sloppy wall of mud engulfs their house.
Social marketing techniques have succeeded in changing behavior through PSAs that include a tangible benefit such as a free health exam.
Some descriptions of best practices may be found in the HIV/AIDS communication literature from developing countries
Thanks for your comments! I like your example of the villagers. Denial is a very strong and common defense. People manage to believe something (that the mud slide couldn’t happen to them) to protect themselves from the anxiety over the truth: they are endangering their lives and those they love and avoiding having to do something that is unquestionably difficult, moving. Defenses cover up harder to express feelings and concerns and when expressed don’t always seem to “make sense” because they actually sacrifice some reality to work. In some work we have done with people who engage in frequent littering, they say the things like “it’s not really trash.” It’s important to understand those perceptions and defenses in order to break them down and motivate change.