Do Health Observances Promote Health?

For many years a unit of the federal government has provided a web site clearinghouse for special days, weeks, and months designated to commemorate particular health issues. The site is called the National Health Information Center and the list of events is called National Health Observances. For example, the first Monday in May is called Melanoma Monday, the 3rd week in March is National Poison Prevention Week, and February is American Heart Month.  The purpose of the health observances clearinghouse is to be a resource for health promotion professionals as well as journalists, pulling the observances all together in one place.  The purpose of the observances themselves is to highlight a particular health problem, enhancing public understanding and promoting public support for research.  Knowing that November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month might inspire a journalist to write a feature story on that topic, or for a health promoter to organize a local event coinciding with the national observance.

I understand that real journalists turn away from the list of health observances because the list is contrived, not real news.  The commemorations are entirely arbitrary with respect to scheduling; nothing unique happens in November regarding the nature and extent of lung cancer, though it is an important problem throughout the year.  The journalists also object because organizers sometimes use the observances as fund raising opportunities.  Because of financial entanglements, following the lead of a designated "month" runs the risk of compromising the objectivity that is an ethical benchmark for professional journalists.

So what is the value of the health observances?  Some of the events are sponsored by health organizations with a large national profile: the American Heart Association is the organizer behind National Heart Month.  For AHA and similar organizations, the health observance is just part of a year-long calendar of public education and fund raising.  They might use the February emphasis to reach out to media with press materials, but also might coordinate local community events.  While the national media campaign is conceptually done from 30,000 feet, the local events will enlist individual activists lending local credence to this cause.

Other events may be initiatives mounted by an individual or small group: December 5-11 is National Handwashing Awareness Week, an event promoted by the Henry the Hand Foundation, not exactly a household name.  For such an organization, the clearinghouse will actually bring people to their website, and might generate interest and engagement that would not occur without the health observance.

These events can play a minor role in health promotion.  The keys are that they must do more than disseminate information, and the information they do provide must be at a language level accessible to the public; that means at a reading grade level of 6-8.  In addition, the observances will have a greater impact if there are functions of the websites and of the campaigns that will engage people in more than just health information.  Community connections are essential to build momentum for these social marketing campaigns.  Energy is created through local advocate participation in raising money and staging awareness activities.

This is a very American quality to our health promotion efforts.  One of the up sides to the value our culture places on individualism is that people take initiative to  make their voices and pocketbooks be heard.  We don’t celebrate a “let the government go it” month.