Change4Life

Change4Life is a new health initiative which, according to the Department of Health (DoH)website, aims to "improve children’s diets and levels of activity so reducing the threat to their future health and happiness. Our goal is to help every family in England eat well, move more and live longer".

Background

The idea of the Change4Life initiative came out of the 2004 Government paper "Choosing Health", which discussed various health concerns such as smoking, drinking and obesity. The Government proposed a strategy to "raise awareness of the health risks of obesity, and the steps people can take through diet and physical activity to prevent obesity."

In the longer term the Government wished to see a "significant part of the strategy delivered through campaigns that are jointly funded by government and industry."

The Change4Life section of the Department of Health's website contains more detail on the initiative. However, the vast majority of this detail appears to involve the use of the Change4Life logo and marketing and branding issues. There does not appear to be any substance as to what the initiative actually is or how it differs from previous and current Department of Health anti-obesity measures.

The secretary of state for health Alan Johnson made a written statement to the House of Commons on November 11 2008 which outlined the details on the Change4Life initiative. Johnson described the initiative as "a lifestyle revolution which will help families eat well, move more and live longer. Under the banner Change4Life, the Government are aiming to galvanise support from everyone in the country from grass-roots organisations to leading supermarkets and charities.".

Funding

The bulk of the funding for the Change4Life initiative comes from a coalition of food retailers and manufacturers and media companies. A total of 33 companies, liaising with the Government through the Advertising Association's Business4Life coalition, have pledged to deliver a "media equivalent value" of £200 million of in-kind contribution. The Advertising Association is a federation of trade bodies and organisations representing the advertising and promotional marketing industries. The Government has pledged £30 million towards the initiative although this is part of the £372 million pledged by the Department earlier this year to tackle obesity.

Advertising

On May 23 2008, it was announced that M & C Saatchi had won the advertising contract, worth £75 million, for Change4Life.

The director of marketing within the Department of Health was Andrew Brent who had previously worked for Boots and Burger King. Brent left the DoH in September, after only five months, to join BSkyB as a group brand marketing director.BSkyB is one of the member organisations of Business4Life. During his time at the DoH Brent was in charge of hiring M & C Saatchi, direct marketing specialist EHS Brann and media agency Manning Gottlieb OMD.

Discord

There has been some discord within the DoH at the use of the private sector in the Change4Life initiative. When the Advertising Association (AA) initially announded its £200 million pledge of marketing support in July, a DoH spokesperson stated that the announcment had taken the department by surprise and that the AA had "jumped the gun". Baroness Peta Buscombe, the then chief executive of the AA, replied by stating that: "I don't know why they are saying that. We have been planning the announcement with them for months." Brent was quoted as playing down these differences and stated, "In any organisation you get differences of opinion. If you are working in a big company, these are expressed internally and don't get announced externally. In government, things get picked up and reported by the media."

Criticism

Criticism of the involvement of the business sector has also arisen. Sustain, the sustainable food and agriculture pressure group, raised concerns over the entry criteria for the companies involved in Business4Life. They wished to see a company's record on marketing to children and adoption of the 'traffic lights' nutritional labelling system as basic requirements for entry into the coalition. (The traffic lights system uses red, green or amber symbols to show whether a food meets nutritional criteria. It is overwhelmingly preferred by the public for its simplicity but avoided by the most large food companies and retailers, which prefer to give percentage figures of guideline daily amounts (GDA) – a system that requires a great deal of specialist nutritional knowledge to understand.) Sustain spokesperson Jeanette Longfield commented:

If you don't have any criteria for entry you completely debase the currency. Rich big companies have bullied the Government, and the Government is blinded by the cash, or at least the promise of cash or cash equivalent.

Richard Watts, coordinator for the Children's Food Campaign, raised further concerns regarding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Watts stated that there was a "significant danger" of businesses merely bolting on the Change4Life logo without being required to give any additional social commitments despite being included in a high-profile Government-backed campaign.

In reply to these criticisms the DoH has stated that there were entry requirements and that monitoring of companies would be conducted. Companies would be required to publicly support the aims of the campaign; carry messaging around diet and activity; contribute to behavioral change; undertake incremental activity; and use the Change4Life branding in certain specified ways.