Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH)
How can we communicate the potential of behavioural science effectively and professionally for the prevention of NCDs?
Public Organisation | Health Promotion & Prevention NCDs | Communication Kit | Research Report
Context
Affective was mandated by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) to develop a communication kit for behavioural economics insights in health promotion and prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The kit was intended as a useful guideline and extension of existing resources available to policy-makers and practitioners in the Swiss Health sector.
Challenge
How can we communicate the potential of behavioural science insights effectively and professionally in the Swiss public health sector of NCDs?
The challenge of this project was to create a comprehensive yet intuitive communication kit addressing questions by the public about concepts, context, purpose and ethics of behavioural economics applied in health promotion and prevention. The project management required an integrative approach to different multilingual stakeholders in a sensitive and time-critical public issue.
The kit was envisioned to provide a professional introduction and classification of behavioural economics tools and principles, give methodological guidance for the successful communication and ethical integration of behavioural economics insights in practice, and to serve as a useful Q&A for enquiries of FOPH stakeholders.
Approach
Firstly, Affective defined and developed the general conditions of the project, including internal and external communication challenges, political considerations and the goal of the kit and its components.
Secondly, the relevant literature on behavioural insights in the health promotion and prevention sector was gathered, analysed and consolidated.
Thirdly, based on research findings, best practices and the existing resources and guidelines, Affective developed the first draft of relevant content and text modules for validation with the target group.
Fourthly, Affective led and facilitated stakeholder workshops with representatives of health prevention organisations and initiatives to gain their perspective on the application of behavioural insights in health promotion and prevention. This step essentially allowed to perfectly tailor the content to the needs of the target group.
In the last step, the content and text components of the communication kit were advanced according to the feedback from the interviews, leading to the finalisation and publication of the communication kit with the FOPH project team.
Concepts
As a result of a comprehensive research phase, review of existing materials and sounding with the target group, Affective identified several relevant behavioural science concepts and integrated those in developing the communication kit. Selected concepts include among others:
Framing
Social Norms
Messenger Effect
Transparency
Authority
Deliverables
The main result of this project was an easy to understand and apply communication kit for behavioural economics in health promotion and prevention including guidelines on the ethical use of behavioural insights.
Picture 1: Communication Kit for Behavioural Economics
Reference
Check out our additional references and applications in the health and sports sector, among others, with the Office of Sport and Health Promotion of Zug.