Mediaboss Marketing

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.

See the rest here:
Vietnams foray into social marketing of nutrition