Michigan Challenges an Obesity Epidemic with Integrated Marketing, Interactivity, and Corporate Co-Sponsors

by Peter Hochstein

This story contains implicit lessons not only for hospital marketers, but also for public health specialists, companies seeking to be good corporate citizens, politicians, and anybody who wants to do some­thing positive about behavior-related health issues.

Moreover, it demonstrates how an interactive advertising campaign that asks participants to meet specific goals can get measurable (and im­pressive) results. And also how gov­ernments can encourage weight loss while avoiding charges of creating a nanny state.

It’s happening in Michigan, where, in 2011, Gov. Rick Snyder asked his state’s community health department “to address the whole obesity epi­demic in our state,” according to Jim Haveman, Director of the Michigan Department of Community Health.

The problem is that “Michigan is one of the heavier states in the country,” with 67 percent of the adult population either overweight or obese, says Haveman. Unsur­prisingly, that has led to consequen­tial healthcare expenses associated with diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions.

“We looked at some Robert Wood Johnson Foundation data and com­pared it to our own data,” Haveman says. “We figured out that over seven years, if people in Michigan reduce their body mass index by only 5 percent, we would have a healthcare savings in this state of $8.7 billion. It’s absolutely stagger­ing.”

A plan to help Michiganders lose weight followed. The plan involved not only the state’s Department of Community Health and its advertis­ing agency, Brogan & Partners in Birmingham, MI, but also a variety of for-profit and not-for-profit or­ganizations.

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