The DH alcohol social marketing strategy

As part of its alcohol social marketing strategy, DH is developing an integrated programme aimed at supporting everyone involved in reducing levels of alcohol related hospital admissions and the number of higher risk drinkers. It brings together better practice and resources to deliver robust social marketing programmes, as well as providing occasional bespoke support.

We are also working with the NHS to:

• Help embed social marketing best practice
• Establish common evaluation processes so real progress toward the PSA across the NHS can be measured
• Develop a first port of call for learning, products and evidence at the Alcohol Learning Centre (www.alcohollearningcentre.org.uk) so we can learn from the innovations of the NHS and you can learn from us
• Provide product development and support to enable the NHS to deliver rigorous social marketing interventions on the ground
• Build measurable and innovative alcohol social marketing throughout England

The national campaign: Units

The Units campaign was developed to raise awareness of alcohol units, recommended daily limits and health risks of exceeding these levels. Alongside campaigns by Drinkaware (www.drinkaware.co.uk ) it has started to shift public awareness and understanding of health risks and to begin changing our drinking culture.

Research carried out from May to October 2008 amongst adults aged 25 or over in England, who drink alcohol at least once a week shows:

• 73% prompted recognition of the campaign
• Increased knowledge of units for wine: at pre-wave only 6% drinkers correctly said there were 3 units in a large glass of wine but this significantly rose to 21% at mid-wave
• Increased agreement that we tend to drink more than is good for us from 77% to 82%
• Website statistics - Unique visitors (312,990), pages viewed (1,122,895) and average time spent on site (2.41mins)

Examples of the national advertising campaign for Units: