PROTEINES – May 08
EPODE EUROPEAN NETWORK
MSM Committee
Methods and Social Marketing
in the field of childhood obesity prevention
PROTEINES – 2008 2
FOREWORD
The global increase of the prevalence of overweight and childhood obesity has become a major global public health concern which calls for an urgent mobilization of all stakeholders. Positive local projects aimed at preventing childhood obesity must be ‘up-scaled’ to encompass whole cities or even regions if they are to make significant impact on the prevalence of obesity in Europe. Large-scale field action also needs to transfer prevention programs from research teams to structures that will be able to implement and develop them in a framework that will ensure its effectiveness and compliance to local culture and structures.
The EPODE methodology, already developed in France (EPODE Programme), Belgium (VIASANO Programme), Spain (THAO Salud Infantil programme) and Greece (PAIDEIATROFI programme) requires a cross-cutting multistakeholder approach, and is based on 4 essential pillars:
• Political awareness, willingness and involvement • Independent scientific validation and evaluation • Network expertise and social marketing skills • Public/private partnership
After 3 years of running the programme in France, the first results of the monitoring and evaluation process show a strong and positive field mobilization and encouraging trends of stabilization or reduction of childhood obesity and overweight prevalence. It undoubtedly stimulates national and local stakeholders involved to pursue action.
In order to facilitate and accelerate the set up and the implementation of community-based interventions community-based on the EPODE methodology in other regions and countries,
awareness among the political, institutional and scientific communities need to be raised and an optimization of well-defined operational guidelines to tackle childhood obesity are also needed.
To fulfil these objectives, the EEN project will enable the creation and the coordination of a think and do tank, raising awareness and making key concrete recommendations regarding the 4 pillars of the EPODE approach.
PROTEINES – 2008 3 With the support of the European Commission, The EEN project will deliver a clear framework for sustainable Community-based interventions using the EPODE methodology, for obesity prevention across Europe. It will accelerate the development of such initiatives by developing guidelines and disseminating good practices, regarding the 4 pillars of the EPODE approach.
Each of these pillars will be particularly studied and discussed within a specific committee of the EEN, as presented on the organizational scheme here below:
This document gives a general presentation of the framework and the research questions that are addressed within the committee working on methods and social marketing.
PROTEINES – 2008 4
COMMITTEE on “Methods and Social Marketing”
This committee will be in charge of producing guidelines regarding the interest of network expertise and social marketing approaches within an EPODE-like program. It will also be in charge of defining the operational structure to create, implement and manage an EPODE-like CBI network, including a central coordination and local project management. Considering EPODE program’s experience as a starting point, key issues will be studied and discussed within this committee:
1. Social marketing approaches applied to public health
• Exploration of Social marketing approaches and techniques applied to
Community-based interventions (especially in the field of obesity prevention)
• Brief description of existing methodologies, operational processes, results and tools
Are there examples that can be best practices for EPODE project engineering?
2. How to create an efficient
Social Marketing Strategy to enable social norms changes?
• Why is social marketing crucial for the success of such programs? What are the
social marketing limits and side effects?
• Can social marketing thinking and approaches modify the social norms and what are
the conditions of its successful use?
• Which social marketing techniques are currently used in the framework of EPODE?
Which are successful? What are the difficulties? Are there other efficient techniques?
• What type of message should be conveyed and how can action be structured? • How to involve in a sustainable and relevant manner local stakeholders in order
PROTEINES – 2008 5 • How to contribute to a long-term creation of group dynamics to change behaviours? • How to reach specific targets? (eg: less educated people)
• Is social marketing the right path to target families with low social economics status?
3. Which profile for a social marketing expert team to coordinate a childhood obesity prevention CBI
• What are the social marketing skills needed for a CBI such as EPODE? • What is the best scale to set up a coordination unit: National? Regional?
• Should there be a national coordination team in each country or should there be a
more European centralised coordination dealing with the cities?
• What profiles should be recruited to coordinate an EPODE program in a new
country? What are the competences required for the national coordination team? For the local project manager?
• Description of the necessary training and coaching of a new coordination team
(frequency, resources, tools…)
• What are the continuous training options and how to stimulate best-practices
sharing?
4. Which position regarding the other stakeholders of the CBI
• Should the coordination unit take part to the evaluation? To what extent? • Partnership to be built with the local team, scientific experts, political
representatives and private partners: legal, ethical and functional framework
PROTEINES – 2008 6 All along the 3 years, Zaragoza University team led by Prof. Luis Moreno and involving
Dr Germán Vicente will follow a work plan with the support of the EEN Coordination team.
1. Define concrete and transferable best practices
- State of the art and benchmark (publications, internet…)
o Social marketing applied to public health, childhood obesity prevention
o Literature on Community-based interventions and social marketing (even if not named so)
o Universities and schools offering a Social Marketing education to be identified and approached to match up with EPODE’s needs
- Qualitative survey based on field interviews / focus groups
o Experts in social marketing focusing on CBIs and sustainable modifications of the educational patterns and of the
environment of the city
o Project managers, experts belonging to the scientific
committees in each EPODE operational countries or within other CBIs
- Final recommendations with experts contributions,
gathered within a methodology book
3. Identification and follow up of relevant teams
Within the EPODE programs / teams willing to get involved
2. Publish and disseminate recommendations
- Publications in relevant journals
- Interventions in congresses and conferences, press
relations, newsletters…
ZARAGOZA UNIVERSITY TEAM& CORDINATION TEAM Board, IAB
CONTINUOUS WORK PLAN
2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 2 0 1 0 COMMITTEE MEETINGS (M)and
SYMPOSIUM (S)
Multidisciplinary experts M1 M2 M3 S1 M5 M4 S2
PROTEINES – 2008 7
GENERAL MODUS OPERANDI
The work in progress will be regularly enriched and discussed within committee meetings (once to twice a year) gathering key experts, political and public health
representatives. Other initiatives and case studies could also be presented.
Board meetings (gathering the Coordination team, the European Commission (DG Health and Consumers), the associated universities, the European Alliance for EPODE, the EEN private partners) will regularly take place to validate the work in progress. Position papers and final recommendations will be available through an interactive website (extranet section accessible to EEN contributors).
A continuous communication on the work in progress and the project as a whole will be ensured through interventions in international congresses and conferences, a dedicated website, newsletters, press events.
Two symposiums will also be organized along the 3 years of the project in order to share the outputs of the 4 committees of the EEN.
EXPECTED RESULTS
This 3-years European project should particularly lead to various communications in European congresses or platforms and publications in peer reviewed journals. The production of concrete and transferable recommendations to be used for the sustainable implementation of EPODE-like programmes in other European countries will be the main output of the project.
At the end and during the course of the project, relevant teams (who could be universities, private stakeholders, States, local governments…) are expected to commit themselves in fostering the set up of EPODE-like CBI networks to prevent childhood obesity in other regions or countries.
PROTEINES – 2008 8
EEN COORDINATING TEAM
• Dr Jean-Michel BORYS Co-director and scientific coordinator of the EEN • Sandrine RAFFIN, Co-director of the EEN, CEO of Protéines
• Christophe ROY, Coordinator of the EEN, [email protected]
• Yann LE BODO, Project manager, EEN: [email protected] / + 33 1 42 12 29 02 /
PROTEINES, 11 rue Galvani, 75017 PARIS, France
EEN CONTRIBUTORS
More information on the EPODE European Network website:
www.epode-european-network.eu
Institutional support 4 major European universities Private sponsors and partners
