Improving Health Through Health Marketing

In this 3-page essay from Preventing Chronic Disease: Public Health Research, Practice, and Policy, Vol. 3: No. 3, July 2006, Jay Bernhardt calls upon those in public health and health marketing to become involved and advocate for the advancement and proliferation of the health marketing discipline and perspective. He describes the function of marketing in health as: "...creating, communicating, and delivering health information and interventions using consumer-centered and science-based strategies to protect and promote the health of diverse populations....[T]he ultimate goal of health marketing is to benefit the product "consumers" and the public."


The article emphasises using a customer-based approach for audience engagement, drawing on the disciplines of relationship management; social marketing; mass and speech communication; public affairs and journalism; health education; instructional design; sociology and psychology; and the creation of audio, video, and multimedia products, among other, to communicate evidence-based health information and interventions. Bernhardt describes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM) as an example for the development, advancement, and operationalisation of other health marketing programmes.


The article describes the function of the four NHCM units: the first one is focused on product design, research, and development, with the primary product being CDC’s science-based health information and message. As stated here, the staff of this unit "includes professionals in health communication, risk, and crisis communication; market research and evaluation; marketing strategy; behavioral science; and... multilingual translation, cultural communication, and health literacy activities." The unit's work includes customer and market research using audience-specific databases and resources useful for developing messages and campaigns.


The second unit is focused on product production and packaging and includes professionals in graphic art and design; audio, video, and multimedia production; animation; photography; web development; broadcast engineering; and instructional design and production experts in other related fields.

The third unit is focused on product distribution through external communication channels, including the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the Guide to Community Preventive Services, the Epidemic Information Exchange (Epi-X), the Health Alert Network (HAN), a professional conference exhibit booth, CDC’s website, the CDC hotline (800-CDC-INFO), the Global Communications Center gallery and exhibits, and the forthcoming HHS-TV channel on the Dish Network, among others.

The fourth unit is focused on customer relationship management and works with collaborators to make partner relationships as strong and as engaging as possible. According to the author, NCHM works across partnership sectors that include public health systems, health care organisations, education institutions and groups, faith and community organisations, and for-profit businesses.