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How to market good nutrition?

In 2000 World Health Organization [WHO] did a project in the north [of Vietnam] for iron supplementation for pregnant women, using the social marketing approach. Since then there have rarely been any nutrition projects using social marketing, said Huynh Nam Phuong, deputy director of the Food and Nutrition Training Centre at the governments National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), and strategies in the field of nutrition have to change.

Child malnutrition has been significantly reduced over the last decade, but one-third of Vietnamese children under five years old are still stunted (too short for their age, a sign of chronic malnutrition) and one-third are anaemic (lack life-saving nutrients), according to the UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF).

The governments current nutritionstrategy aims to reduce the rate of stunting in children under the age of five to 23 percent by 2020.

Tackling anaemia is a priority. The condition - commonly the result of iron deficiency - is caused when the red blood cells do not have enough haemoglobin, an iron-containing protein that transports oxygen in the blood, or there are too few red blood cells. Iron-deficiency anaemia affects some 37 percent of pregnant women in Vietnam and is one of the countrys leading causes of maternal death as well as child stunting, according to UNICEF.

Potentially fatal, the condition can also cause mental disability, lethargy and long-term health problems stemming from low birth weight. Yet it can be easily treated with supplements of iron and folic acid, a form of the water-soluble vitamin B, which helps the body make new red blood cells.

Child malnutrition has been significantly reduced over the last decade

Social marketing focuses on consumer needs and uses commercial marketing principles to sell changes in behaviour or raise awareness relevant to the public good, but unlike private sector marketing, the goal is to benefit consumers rather than the marketer.

This approach has long been used in other fields of health in Vietnam. The NGO, Population Services International (PSI), has distributed condoms through commercial channels like guest houses and street food kiosks, and has even made syringes available todrug users at tea stalls and roadside cigarette vendors.

Since 2010 UNICEF has used social marketing in Dong Thap - a southern province in the Mekong Delta region, where up to half of all pregnant women are anaemic - to replace an earlier UNICEF-supported programme that distributed free supplements of iron and folic acid. The aim was to avoid dependency of the local health sector on donor funding.

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Vietnams foray into social marketing of nutrition

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The first global health conference on social marketing (SM) and social franchising (SF) that began here on Tuesday saw experts calling to scale up the use of these tools to address a wider gamut of health challenges in India, instead of limiting them to just family planning.

In her address at the inaugural session, Anuradha Gupta, additional secretary and mission director of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in the union health and family welfare ministry, said India was a pioneer in SM in the health sector.

"But we have not been able to take it to the second level. It is mostly confined to family planning and marketing of contraceptives," she said.

Experts in healthcare and allied areas from 25 countries are taking part in the three-day meet, the "Global Health Conference on Social Marketing and Franchising", organised by HLFPPT, a not-for-profit trust promoted by the mini-Ratna central public sector enterprise HLL Lifecare Ltd, with the support of the ministry, Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, HLL and National AIDS Control Organisation.

Explaining the need to diversify SM and SF initiatives, Gupta said it was important to contain maternal and child mortality in the country.

Speaking on "The Social Marketing of Contraceptives and its impact on World Fertility Trend", Philip D Harvey, president of DKT International (a non-profit organisation that designs and operates social marketing and clinical programs for family planning and AIDS prevention in developing countries), said social marketing programmes have been serving 66 million couples across 67 countries in the world.

"SM is cost-effective and a bridge to self-sufficiency. In SM, contraceptives are sold and not given away. SM is mostly products and SF is mostly about providing services," he said.

MAyyapan, chairman and managing director of HLL Lifecare Ltd, said the initiatives to provide infrastructure for population stabilisation is like the hardware of a computer system.

"The real challenge is the development of the software - to make people believe and accept the need for change or transformation. This is where the role of SM in changing the behaviour of people becomes significant," said Ayyapan.

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Use social marketing to address health issues: Anuradha Gupta

Kochi, Dec. 2:

A three-day global health conference opening here on Tuesday will explore the potential of social marketing and social franchising in promoting primary healthcare in developing countries.

The conference, organised by the Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust, will have attendees and speakers from about 25 countries, apart from top experts in the field.

Philip D. Harvey (Phil Harvey), president of DKT International, a US-based charity which runs family planning programmes in several developing countries, will speak on social marketing of contraceptives. Top officials of United Nations Population Fund, USAID and British Department for International Development (DFID) will be among the speakers.

At a news conference here, M. Ayyappan, chairman and managing director of HLL Lifecare Ltd, pointed out that social marketing and franchising were emerging as important tools for achieving universal coverage for primary healthcare. He pointed out that around 200 crore people across the world had no proper access to healthcare.

The meeting will try to find how the two tools could be used more effectively in the developing countries. Social marketing and franchising were of great help in India, particularly in making behavioural changes in the use of contraceptives and family planning methods, Ayyappan said.

(This article was published on December 2, 2013)

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Global meet on social marketing in Kochi