CARMEN School International Course: Social Marketing and Prevention of Obesity

(Santiago, Chile, 26–27 August 2008)

Event accompanying the 4^th Pan American Congress to Promote Vegetable and Fruit Consumption

- Program (3 pp, PDF, 152 Kb; excerpts to right)
- Color flyer (in Spanish, 2 pp, PDF, 1.4 Mb)

About the CARMEN School

PAHO Links
- CARMEN
- Noncommunicable Disease Unit
- Newsletter, Chronic Disease Prevention & Control in the Americas
- Healthy Eating and Active Living
- Let's eat healthy, live well and get moving, America campaign

WHO Links
- Chronic Diseases
- Diet and Physical Activity: A Public Health Priority:
Diet   |   Physical Activity
- Integrated Chronic Disease Prevention and Control
- Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion
- Move for Health Initiative

Organized by the National Institute of Food Technology (Instituto Nacional de Tecnología de Alimentos / INTA), University of Chile (UChile) and PAHO/WHO, within the framework of the 4^th Pan American Congress to Promote Vegetable and Fruit Consumption (4^toCongreso Panamericano de Promoción del Consumo de Frutas y Verduras) to be held in Santiago from 28 to 30 August 2008. Language of both activities: Spanish.

Objectives

1. Identify the principles that characterize social marketing and planning programs using the marketing mix (the "4 Ps": Product, Price, Place/ distribution, and Promotion).
2. Understand the importance of formative research and the segmentation of audiences when designing social marketing programs.
3. Recognize the importance of establishing realistic objectives for the different target audiences.
4. Distinguish among the stages of design, development, implementation, and evaluation of a social marketing campaign.
5. Analyze the possibility of designing and implementing a social marketing strategy to prevent child obesity in Chile.

Introduction

The high and growing prevalence of child obesity observed in Chile in recent decades is a cause of grave concern, and its prevention and control are among the government's priority goals. For this purpose, various health promotion and education programs have been developed, aimed at bringing about an increase in both the public awareness and knowledge of risk factors associated with this problem among target groups, especially those related to diet and physical activity, since to date few changes have been observed changes that would lead to any expectation that this continuous rising trend might be stopped.

Social marketing is an integrated strategy that applies the principles and techniques of commercial marketing to the analysis, planning, execution, and evaluation of programs aimed at achieving a voluntary change in the behavior of a given target population, for the purpose of improving their personal well-being as well as that of society. Thus, social marketing can make a valuable contribution when to addressing the problem at hand.

The University of Chile's Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology (INTA), in coordination with PAHO/WHO's CARMEN School, is pleased to offer this course, aimed at academics and professionals from the health, food science, agronomic science, and social science sectors, as well as at professionals working in business schools and in charge of marketing in food companies, who are interested in starting to take definitive steps to build more effective strategies to promote a better quality of life.

Those involved in the course will include Dr. Carol Bryant, Co-Director of the Florida Prevention Research Center (PRC) at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, and academics from the University of Chile, representatives from the Ministries of Health and Agriculture, and representatives from the private sector.

For more information, see the program (in English) and the flyer (in Spanish).