Health-promotion drives waste of money, say nurses

Multi-million-dollar health promotion campaigns are a waste of money and do not change people's behaviour, according to nurses.

Funds would be better spent on treating patients and targeting the most at-risk groups rather than running high-profile advertising pushes, they say. Britain's Royal College of Nursing is to debate the issue at its annual conference starting in Bournemouth on Sunday.

The Department of Health has spent millions over the past five years on advertising campaigns to encourage people to stop smoking, eat fruit and vegetables, and practise safer sex.

But a resolution tabled by the health visitors and public health forum of the RCN, entitled "Getting it wrong?", suggests that the money has been wasted.

The resolution calls on the conference to discuss "whether resources allocated to some health-care promotion campaigns could be better used in providing direct care to patients."

The Government spent $140 million on a recent poster campaign about HIV and Aids, but HIV cases in Britain rose by 50 per cent between 2000 and 2004 and the number of new diagnoses among heterosexuals now outstrips homosexual transmissions.

Cases of sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia, gonorrhoea and herpes have also continued to rise, particularly among young people.

More than $85 million will be spent this year alone on providing free fruit in schools, in addition to about $2 million in 2003 to a campaign encouraging people to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Despite this, consumption of healthy food has not increased dramatically, with only 18 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women in the most deprived areas of the UK eating the required five a day.

The National Health Service smoking cessation campaign has a budget this year of about $145 million and has spent millions on hard-hitting attempts to hit its target of reducing smoking rates to under 21 per cent by 2010.

Yet between 1998 and 2004, the proportion of adults who smoke fell by just 3 per cent to 25 per cent and rates among younger age groups, considered to be more susceptible to advertising, have risen.

- INDEPENDENT