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SALT LAKE CITY — Laura Leon remembers the day her father came home from the doctor's office and was told he was at high risk for diabetes. Her grandparents already have the condition and the risk for her is also high.
Leon and her mother, Olga Rubiano, teach health courses in Spanish for Alliance Community Services, a program sponsored by the Utah Health Department. The mother-daughter team tries to teach families how to adopt better eating and exercise habits. "The first step is to bring awareness in the community about the increasing obesity and other chronic disease rates," Rubiano said.
They also realized they needed to make some changes within their own family. "Now that we found out from the doctor that my dad could develop it, we eat more vegetables than red meat and we eat less fat," said Leon, an accounting student at Westminster College.
Statistics show that America needs a new direction in healthful habits. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three Americans are obese (33.8 percent), as are 17 percent of children between the ages of 2-19. In Utah, nearly 10 percent of children are considered obese.
But what does it really take to make better health choices? How do we shun those cold, bubbly sodas and deny those crisp, salty chips?
While it may seem that good ol' fashioned willpower is the solution, one University of Utah professor says it takes a slow turn in social attitudes to make living with better health choices stick. The entire community needs to change.
"If all of us started leading healthier lives then there would be less of an impact on the healthcare system," said Debra Scammon, Emma Jones professor of marketing at the University of Utah Eccles School of Business.
Scammon recently co-authored a study on social marketing and how it can be applied to encouraging communities and families to change health living attitudes. The study identified three key areas.
The first area is making sure health information is easily understood. This requires campaigns focusing on specific groups, such as age, ethnicity, sex or language.
When you're making a large social change in attitude, these kind of things take time.
–- Dr. Tamara Scheffield
The second area is convincing people that poor health choices can lead to serious problems, such as heart disease or diabetes. Recognizing that making healthy choices involves trade-offs between health and other priorities is important. A family where both parents work full time may need help in thinking of ways in how to make quick healthy meals when the drive-thru is so much easier. "Don't just tell a patient just to eat vegetables, but give them recipes on how to make tasty dishes with vegetables," Scammon said.
The third area is the most important: time. Scammon said it takes years for attitudes to change. One of the most successful social marketing campaigns Scammon points to is the "truth" tobacco campaign. The campaign has showed young people the consequences of smoking and how tobacco companies have manipulated people's thinking about tobacco, but it took 20 years to see a dramatic decrease in smoking rates, she said.
"When you're making a large social change in attitude, these kind of things take time," said Dr. Tamara Scheffield, medical director of community health and prevention at Intermountain Healthcare.
She also helps with Intermountain's LiVe campaign. Four years in the running, the LiVe campaign also targets young people ages 11-15, where the obesity epidemic seems to have hit the hardest. Scheffield said obese children in that age range have a far greater chance of being obese than adults.
But an effective campaign is more than just media messages. Scheffield said a good social media campaign also looks at community partnerships: helping to create safe outdoor spaces for children to play, running/bike paths, altering living environments for better health. Intermountain also offers classes for family members to learn together how to change their eating habits. By involving entire families, Scheffield said, more lasting changes can be made to improve health.
Rubiano, who coordinates awareness programs on obesity and diabetes for Hispanic communities in Weber and Salt Lake Counties, said sometimes it helps to take families to grocery stores to show them affordable fresh foods that can take the place of canned vegetables or microwave diners. She also teaches families to keep a calendar to plan meals, times when the family comes together to cook, and times when the family can spend time at the park together.
The effort to change attitudes about personal health is a lot larger than most people realize, said Jenny Johnson, a health education specialist for the Utah Department of Health. Schools, city councils, residents, families, and access to healthful foods are all important elements. "We get so hung up on the individual, and looking at them and saying, well, you made that choice and that's why (you are) the way you are," Johnson said. "It's not as simple as telling someone you need to do something and then just expecting them to do it."
Scheffield said like many health-focused social marketing campaigns, Intermountain is dedicated to running the LiVe campaign for years to come.
"It's going to take small steps," Scammon said.
Email:gfattah@desnews.com
