Every time Health Minister Tony Ryall and Education Minister Anne Tolley use the term "nanny state" to justify their new food policies, many public health researchers wince.
They know the two words masterfully tap into the ideology that the state should stay out of matters like food consumption.
So much so that public health workers and researchers have felt virtually powerless to respond.
Until yesterday.
Now they are planning a counterattack against the use of the terms "nanny state", "bureaucracy", "political correctness", "health nazi" and others by politicians and the food, tobacco and alcoholindustries.
Dr George Thomson and colleagues from Otago University at Wellington searched the English language media internationally and their findings included a sharp increase in the use of "nanny state" after 2002.
In relation to obesity, tobacco and alcohol in New Zealand, its use peaked last year at 120 references per 100,000 articles.
Big rises in the use of "nanny state" and "bureaucracy" coincided with the proposal to make bars smoke-free and Parliament's obesity inquiry.
"When industries think their profits are at risk, they negatively frame the efforts of government to protect people from an industry's activities," Dr Thomson said.
"There's a need to reframe public health activity as stewardship that protects people. We need to emphasise the advantages of the strong state, the state that protects," he told the conference. But the public health community, delving into alien territory, acknowledges it needs some help from the country's top advertising brains in coming up with catchy counter-phrases.
Professor Boyd Swinburn, of Deakin University in Melbourne, promotes the term "ninny state", which he picked up from an Australian conference audience.
Dr Thomson said "ninny state" was used to describe some current public health policies that were "stupid, weak and not protecting people".
He also promoted the slogan "end corporate welfare", which he said was a hit at industries that benefited financially from inadequate controls on their products.
the ideology here is the question of who has responsiibity for looking afetr themselves. in the case of restrictions, the question is often pitched as removing choice from consumers in their own best interests. this tends to rub people up the wrong way.
the problem is that consumer choice means that people will often do the wrong or stupid thing, even though they know that its wrong or stupid (i speak as a smoker).
this leads to the problem 9according to pro-large state people) that the people who do these stupid things will then turn to the state for assistance with health problems. the most common exxample given these days is letting junk food into schools leading to greater costs in dealing with obesity and diabetes.
i will be interested to see how they manage this campaign, but i suspect that deleivering a message of "you need to be protected from yourself" will be a hard sell.
still railing against the corporate sector may have some results
One of the problems is the assumption that behaviour is rational while it is often arrational.
ReplyDeleteThe underlying premise in these campaigns is a much harder sell than the 'save you from your self'. It is, 'we can't afford to treat you any more so buck up your ideas; or, following the UK's lead, we don't care how sick you are, come into work.