“Some of you may have seen recent press coverage suggested that the Change4Life campaign is to be brought to cease. I wanted to reassure you that there are no plans to cease the Change4Life campaign. However, I did make clear in the speech that given the new financial climate I intend to pursue a new approach to the campaign – where investment by the taxpayer will be progressively scaled back and the commercial sector and charities are asked to provide more of the necessary direct investment in Change4Life to sustain the initiative.” Andrew Lansley.

The latest Change4Life TV ad is planned to air from now, and this time they’re focusing on ‘60 active minutes’. It highlights the fact that kids need to do at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day (this doesn’t have to be in one go) to get their heart beating faster than usual. They’re hoping to re-run these in the summer to help reinforce the Change4Life message.

More detail on this and other topics can be found in the full Change4Life newsletter.

The latest Change4Life update has come out from the central Change4Life team.

Some of the key findings are that at the end of February 57% of the public have heard of Change4Life, and 63% of mothers have heard of it.

For the full performance statistics

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There are now numerous resources for helping you to promote Change4Life and to use it to promote your own activities – details of all of them are available

. Obviously promotingactivity.com remains the place we would recommend above all else.

Next phases of campaign

Rooting the Behaviours

The current phase of the Change4Life campaign focuses around rooting the behaviours. One of eight behavioural changes is being promoted in the latest TV commercial. The ‘Me Size Meals’ advert focuses on the fact that parents often give their kids the same-sized portions as themselves when really they need much less (in research this was seen by mums as one of the behaviours they would find easy to change). They will post the new advert onto the DH YouTube page this week.

‘We’re In’ activity

The ‘We’re In’ phase of the campaign was due to begin in May and run until September, but it is being pushed back and it is more likely that this will begin in the second week of June.

Part of this activity involves access to regular space in local press titles across England.

For more details of the next phases of the campaign and more overall campaign info

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If you would like to understand more about how to use the
Change4Life campaign in your area then please get in contact -
john@makesportfun.com or 020 3239 8824.

What is Change4Life?
Change4Life is a new initiative, supported by the Department of Health, bringing together health and education professionals, industry and the third sector with the shared aims to improve children’s diets and levels of activity so reducing the threat to their future health and happiness. The goal is to help every family in England eat well, move more and live longer. Many national, regional and local partners – health care professionals, teachers, charities, government agencies, the media, big businesses and community organisations – will help build Change4Life into a movement.

Why do we need Change4Life?
Obesity is a growing problem. Over the last century the food supply has changed beyond recognition; abundant and varied food options are now almost continuously available and at relatively low cost. Sedentary occupations have become the norm, cars have replaced more active forms of transport and society places a high value on labour saving gadgets.  Modern life, therefore, means unhealthy behaviours are often the ‘easy’ option and people need to constantly and actively try not to gain weight.

The link between obesity and preventable illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, is undeniable but research shows that many parents are unaware of the risks to their children and that they tend to underestimate the amount they and their children eat and overestimate the amount of activity the family does. According to recent reports, over a third of children in England are currently overweight or obese.

Research also shows that people will only change their behaviours if they believe that everyone around them is changing too. If families are to change their behaviours around diet and activity they will need the support of those they trust: their doctors, their schools, the supermarkets where they buy their food, the institutions and brands that they trust.

Change4Life aims to inspire a society-wide movement that encourages everyone to make changes to their diet and activity levels. Our focus is on long-term prevention, so in the early stages of the movement we will be targeting families with young children (aged 0-11).  Change4Life will reposition the issue of obesity, highlighting to parents the links between poor diet and sedentary lifestyles and preventable illnesses and their responsibility to ensure their children eat better and take regular exercise. It will offer accessible, friendly and encouraging support to implement changes.

How will Change4Life affect me as a health care professional?
We want to inform all health care professionals in England about Change4Life in the lead up to the launch to the public.  As part of an integrated marketing plan, an advertising campaign will launch to the public in January 2009.

How Change4Life affects you will depend on what you do – we anticipate different levels of engagement. You may only need to be aware of what Change4Life is, but if you have regular contact with families who either have or are at risk of weight issues you may want to know more, join with Change4Life and have access to resources we are developing for the workforce and for consumers.

We already run healthy living activities to combat obesity, what do we need to do to connect to Change4Life?
Where possible we would like you to align your activity to Change4Life.

Obesity is a complex and sensitive issue to tackle.  Change4Life will help to reposition the issue of obesity, highlighting to parents the links between weight and preventable illnesses and their responsibility to ensure their children eat better and take regular exercise. The movement will help to make behaviours around diet and physical activity more high profile and will provide accessible, friendly and encouraging support to implement changes.

In some instances, your alignment to the movement may involve simply adding the Change4Life logo to your existing materials so that they are co-branded; in others, it may involve developing new initiatives where Change4Life (or a sub brand) is more prominent.  A set of Change4Life Principles and Guidelines for Government and the NHS will soon be available. The guidelines include instructions on the use of the main Change4Life logo, sub brands (such as walk4life, cook4life and swim4life) and the potential to create a sub brand for your own healthy living initiative.

What about the 5 A Day and other relevant campaigns?
The Change4Life movement will combine with the 5 A Day campaign and other relevant healthy living initiatives.  We would like those people running local activities (such as Breastfeeding Cafes, Weight Management Programmes, Toddler Activity Groups, Cooking Classes and Walking Groups) to align and combine with Change4Life, sharing best practice, using new ideas, resources and opportunities to help build a national, recognisable movement.

Why are we using this approach?
Obesity is a global problem.  It is a complex issue for which there are no easy answers and, as yet, no country has found a way to solve the rise in obesity.

Extensive and ongoing academic and consumer research (informed by an Expert Review Group of leading academics in the fields of physical activity, nutrition and behavioural psychology) has provided a number of key insights around attitudes and behaviours to obesity, diet and exercise.  Key insights around parents and children are that:

• Although parents realise that obesity is a growing problem they do not recognise it is their problem.
• Parents tend to underestimate how much they and their children eat and overestimate the amount of physical activity they do.
• Parents do not make the connection between unhealthy weight status in their children and long-term health problems (such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer).
• A host of ‘unhealthy’ behaviours have no perceived risks to parents: e.g. sedentary behaviour, snacking levels and portion size.

Using these insights, Change4Life will help to reposition the issue of obesity, highlighting to parents the links between poor diet and sedentary lifestyles and preventable illnesses and their responsibility to ensure their children eat better and take regular exercise.  It will create a national movement with a local community feel, involving all areas of society to help encourage changes in attitude and behaviour to diet and exercise.

If you would like to know more about some of the insights behind the Change4Life strategy it is worth reading: The ‘Healthy Living’ Social Marketing Initiative: A review of the evidence and
the Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives Strategy (both are available online, please see links below). We will publish a summary of the consumer research findings soon.

Why is Change4Life working with commercial companies?
Change4Life follows social marketing principles.  Social marketing is an adaptable approach, increasingly being used to achieve and sustain behaviour goals on a range of social issues.  The National Social Marketing Centre’s definition of health-related social marketing is ‘the systematic application of marketing, alongside other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioural goals, to improve health and to reduce inequalities.’

At the outset, social marketing is about understanding people’s starting point in relation to an issue, in this case unhealthy weight gain. Our key questions are:

•    What in their behaviours places them at risk?
•    What drives their current behaviour?
•    How might they be motivated to change?
•    Who might be able to influence them?
•    What might act as barriers to change?

Research suggests that many of our behaviours around diet and physical activity are influenced by what people are doing around us, in our home environment, in the media, in supermarkets and stores and at school.  Studies in adults indicate that people are very sensitive to social norms for food consumption and use these to judge what they should be eating.  Children too want to be accepted and belong to their peer group through their choice of food as much as their choice of clothes and music. In addition, societal changes have resulted in a scenario where physical activity is no longer an integral part of everyday life and sedentary lifestyles are the default for most children and adults.  To address this we need to take a whole-society approach to help influence and shift behaviours around diet and physical activity. We recognise that many organisations have influence with and can reach our target audiences in ways that we cannot. Therefore, we will be working with commercial partners to help influence people’s behaviour. We will do this by tapping into the power of brand loyalties – working to make changes in food manufacturing, shopping habits, supporting new activity schemes and spreading the word in the press, television and radio.

Before any commercial company can work with us on the Change4Life movement, they must sign up to our Terms of Engagement. The Terms of Engagement ask companies to commit to working with us on both healthy diet and physical activity initiatives that complement and support the Change4Life objectives.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the Department of Health has £75 million to spend on the Change4Life movement over three years.  The commercial sector spends £335 million each year on promoting confectionery, snacks, fast food and sugary drinks.  We need to work with these companies if we are to influence their corporate responsibility agendas.

What do we actually want the public to do?
We want parents and children to eat better and move more. We need to influence them to incrementally change their behaviours around food and physical activity.

We recognise that the behaviours we are asking people to change – how they shop, how they cook, how they eat, how they travel, how they play – are not easy. Some of them are hard to do once; all of them are hard to change for life. They will need incentives to change and sustained support as they try to embed those changes in their lives.

Using the findings from the research, we are developing a set of behaviour change goals and messages – such as eating five fruit and veg a day, taking 60 minutes activity a day, cutting back on fatty foods.

What resources are you developing for the public and when will these be available?
We recognise that information alone is not enough so we are currently developing resources for the public. These will include a dedicated helpline number, a website, information packs and a range of useful resources. These will available from November onwards.

Whom can I contact at a regional level to learn more?
The Regional Obesity Lead in your region is your first point of contact.

Are there any Change4Life resources available for the workforce?
We are currently developing resources for health care professionals.  We will make these available in the coming months. Once these resources are available you will be able to download some of them from the Department of Health website. You will also be able to order resources from Prolog.

If you would like more information in the meantime please visit the Obesity section on the Department of Health website. Here you can access a range of existing resources for healthcare professionals, including Care Pathways, NICE guidance, and the National Heart Forum’s ‘Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives: A toolkit for developing local strategies’.

How does this link in with the NCMP?
As part of the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP), parents of children in Reception and Year 6, may routinely be sent their child’s results (height, weight and an interpretation) at any time during the 2008/09 academic year. These letters will be sent with a Change4Life leaflet encouraging them to eat well and move more, with top tips on fun and easy ways to improve the health of their children.  For more information about the NCMP in your area or the provision of results to parents, please contact the PCT obesity lead or for general information go to the Healthy Living section on the Department of Health website.

What about the rest of the UK?
We are in dialogue with our colleagues in the Devolved Administrations to align with their own healthy living initiatives.

Links

Change4Life Brand guidelines
www.dh.gov.uk/change4life

The ‘Healthy Living’ Social Marketing Initiative: A review of the evidence:
www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_073044

Policy information, existing guidance on obesity and the Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives Strategy:
www.dh.gov.uk/obesity

Further information about the National Child Measurement Programme:
www.dh.gov.uk/healthyliving

Further information on social marketing:
www.nsms.org.uk

Change4Life is a new mass movement aiming to improve children’s diets and levels of physical activity.  Millions of children face an increased risk of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and depression in later life because of their lifestyles now.

Supported by the Department of Health, Change4Life will invite every family in England to eat well, move more, live longer. It will help parents by providing information, tips and support to empower them to make better food choices for their children and encourage activities like outdoor play, walking and cycling.

Fortunately we are not launching from a standing start.  There are already many examples of successful initiatives around the country, run by committed, public-spirited professionals and volunteers.  So Change4Life will support these and help share their best practice with the rest of the country.  Change4Life will also introduce new ideas and opportunities to get involved, working in collaboration with Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), Local Authorities, schools and voluntary groups, as well as major commercial and media partners.

From walking buses to cookery classes for young mums to sports classes for pre-school kids, there is great work being done.  That’s why the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson, is personally writing to every identified local activist whose efforts encourage healthier eating and activity amongst children in their locality, asking for their support.

Change4Life will be launched to the general public early in 2009. Their priority now is to ask volunteers to add their support. Your experience and energy will be crucial to the success of Change4Life.

To register your interest in becoming a local partner of Change4Life please visit www.nhs.uk/change4life or call 0300 123 3434.  A member of the Change4Life team will then be able to update you on ways that your neighbourhood can benefit from the national 4Life campaign.

Please can you forward this information on to your networks via your
newsletters, websites or by email. We are committed to getting hundreds of
thousands of local organisations on board with this national campaign.

The Department of Health have been working on a national campaign for 2 years now. What they’ve found is that people don’t want the government telling them how to live their lives (what a shock) but would appreciate a health department supported people’s movement (enter music from The Life of Brian . . . )

What does this mean? It means that the Department of Health is putting £75 million over 3 years into promoting healthy living, but doing it in a way which fits with real people. Supporting existing projects, programmes, schemes, community centres and real people. I’ve seen the presentations and I’m convinced – I think they’ve done a really good job with the research, with their thinking and with the design.

It’s supposed to kick off with Gordon Brown announcing it in the last week of July. This will probably get decent coverage on Channel 4 news, but not much in the Sun. It’s intended as a way of getting all the right organisations aware that this is happening but not going large with the public as yet. This announcement will probably involve a showcase meeting involving a supermarket, a national paper, the minister for sport and various other

This announcement will be followed by Department of Health getting in touch with involved in sport, physical activity, food and health generally. They want to keep everyone informed and get feedback. This should take place throughout the rest of July and August.

Publicity will start in the Autumn with PR of existing schemes, programmes and projects. So if you want to get publicity for anything you’re doing then watch this space and I’ll tell you how to get your details to them.

Then in January they’ll be launching TV ads. I’ve seen the first draft of the storyboards for that, but I imagine with it being so far off it’s likely to change a few times between now and then.

I’ll be able to bring you more detail on how you can benefit from this over the upcoming weeks and months, but for now here’s some headlines.

• you will be able to use the Change 4 Life campaign branding if it’s helpful
• they’ll be producing packs for partners. I’m currently helping them identify what people would like so if you have any ideas then email me at john@makesportfun.com
• they’ll be producing a CRM system (customer relationship management) which will make it easy for people to find their local services – this is a chance for you to promote what you’ve got
• they’ll be doing case studies of hundreds of great existing schemes, and turning 4 or 5 of them into TV ads. If you want publicity for your work then this is a great opportunity

The biggest thing though is that this should be raising the profile of sport and activity and getting people thinking about it more.