Grant supports media campaign on a healthy lifestyle

A health crisis is looming in Delaware's future if something isn't done about Delawareans' lack of physical activity and poor eating habits, warns a University of Delaware researcher.

Allan Waterfield, health and exercise sciences, is leading a team of researchers that received a grant from the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services to intervene so that Delawareans are better able to avoid ill health as they grow older.

The state awarded UD's College of Health and Nursing Sciences $200,000 for a first step: A media campaign based on research into the attitudes and habits of two targeted groups– young people 18 to 30, and minorities, specifically, Hispanics and African Americans. The campaign should run this summer.

According to 1998 statistics compiled for the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS), a national organization of public health associations that does a yearly survey of health-related issues, 54 percent of all Delawareans are overweight, 14 percent are obese and 83 percent have no regular or sustained physical activity. Other health related surveys show that Delaware is one of the least physically active and nutritionally sound states in the nation. Even more alarming, statistics indicate that the percentage of overweight young people in Delaware has doubled in the last 20 years.

The "data-driven social marketing" campaign will be designed to inspire fastfood- eating, couch potatoes to get off the couch and into the supermarket produce section.

The UD team will coordinate the campaign aimed at changing attitudes and behaviors with input from leaders within the minority and health communities. Then, Hallmark Communications and Barron Marketing Communications will use the information to design a media campaign based on the University's findings.

Waterfield, Avron Abraham and Michael Peterson make up the faculty portion of the team that will do an "upfront appraisal of the targeted groups' attitudes and behavior toward physical activity and nutrition." That appraisal will give Hallmark and Barron the facts they need to form a campaign that takes aim at the specific psychological barriers to better health each group reveals during the study.

The grant is part of the $25 million Delaware received from the first year of a 25-year, $206 billion settlement tobacco companies made with states suing for the cost of treating sick smokers.

–Barbara Garrison