A Comparative Analysis of Public Health Websites in the UK

This report provides an analysis of four prominent public health websites in the UK: Change4life, Talk to Frank, Get it, and Samaritans. Change4life, a campaign focused on promoting healthy eating and physical activity, is evaluated for its effectiveness in combating childhood obesity. Talk to Frank, an anti-drug education service, is assessed for its impact on reducing drug use among young people. Get it, a free condom distribution scheme, is examined for its role in promoting sexual health and preventing STIs and unintended pregnancies. Finally, the Samaritans website, offering confidential emotional support, is analyzed for its impact on mental health and suicide prevention. The report discusses the strengths and limitations of each website, considering their target audiences, campaign strategies, and overall effectiveness in addressing public health challenges. The analysis includes references to evaluation reports and criticisms of each campaign to provide a balanced view. The report highlights the successes and failures of each initiative, offering insights into the complexities of public health interventions.

Running head: PUBLIC HEALTH
Public health
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Website 1
Change4life is a society wide movement aiming at Eat Well, Move More, Live Longer in
United Kingdom. This movement is aimed at prevention of children from becoming overweight
through encouragement and empowering them to eat better and healthy. National Health Policy
(NHS) and government of UK take this initiate responding to rise in obesity launched on 3
January 2009 focusing on families having children under 11 (Nhs.uk 2017). This website is
effective as it encompasses adults and introduces better and healthy habits for families and
children. Change4life website uses cartoon imagery and non-judgmental and informal language
that suggest exercise and diet swaps. This website offers support to the audience so that they
make changes in their eating habits to lead a healthy lifestyle.
This website talks to people directly online and via TV advertising deliver the message of
healthy living and lifestyle so that risk of obesity can be reduced. The evaluation of the campaign
is done through quantitative and qualitative research with national partners, consumers, local
supporters and considers the future aspects. This campaign has shown excellent results where it
reached 99% of targeted families. Around 413,466 families joined the Change4life campaign in
the last one year. After the evaluation through research, around 44,833 families were found to be
still involved with Change4Life after six months. The campaign is a great success where over 1.9
million people responded through online, postal, telephone and face-to-face in last one year
(Nhs.uk 2017).
This campaign is effective as it helped the UK government to work together to fight
against overweight and obesity among children and adults. In response to the scaling obesity
statistics, this government campaign encourage individuals and families to seek, desire and make

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healthy choices to create such a environment that help them to maintain healthy weight. With the
increasing trends of obesity in UK, it is forecasted that by 2050, one in ten people will be obese
and doubling of healthcare costs reaching £49.9 billion. There is no accepted model for
behaviour change for obesity and therefore, this campaign was launched for the first time to
support people change behaviour in diet and activity to achieve healthy living and weight
(Nhs.uk 2017).
Change4Life website uses cartoon pictures conveying messages for physical activity and
healthy eating. This campaign has created awareness among mothers about healthy food and
living for their children and family. The evaluation reports illustrated that families adopted good
behaviour and increase in healthy living through this campaign as they make an effort to improve
their health. This campaign worked well for the broader policy context and in explaining to the
public. The campaign identity captured the imagination of public in a beautiful manner. It also
makes it easy to land important messages in a charming and engaging manner (Nhs.uk 2017).
However, the campaign has certain limitations. There is requirement of some more time
on mobilization of the network and requirement of amount of time so that people and
stakeholders engage properly. The CRM programme was lately launched as many families
waited for the first pack of CRM. This programme need to be launched as soon as the families
joins Change4Life. There is also requirement of development of more products for the
professionals like doctors and teachers having professional interest in combating overweight and
obesity.

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Reference
Nhs.uk, 2017. Food facts - Change4Life. [online] Available at:
http://www.nhs.uk/Change4Life/Pages/healthy-eating.aspx [Accessed 19 Nov. 2017].
Website 2
Talk to Frank is a national drug education service that is established in association with
Home Office of the British Government and Department of Health in 2003. This website is
launched with an intention to reduce the illegal and legal drugs use via adolescent and teenager’s
education about potential effects of alcohol and drug use. Frank website provides services like
seeking information or take advice about drugs via phone or email. The services are given
confidentially to people via live chat service in the form of treatment and counselling available
24 hours a day. This website is one of the longest running anti-drugs campaigns in UK, drug use
has gone down by 9% after the campaign was launched, and there was decline in the cannabis
use and changing attitudes towards tobacco use among adolescents (Talktofrank.com 2017).
Frank has worked well in the prevention of drugs in UK, as it is a big improvement made
for the reduction of illegal and legal drug use. Talk to Frank is a big replacement for a drug
education strategy in UK. This website has never used humour for conveying messages and
always made a serious point. The campaigns carried out by Frank use focused groups for testing
among young people. However, Frank is facing biggest challenge, as there is growing costs of
legal drugs or party drugs in UK as many young people are using it frequently. This website has
survived major cutback in advertising and Frank is responsible for falling of illegal drugs. This
website gained popularity since 2007 in creating awareness among 11-18 years old audience
rising to 81% where young people found Frank to be reliable for seeking drug advice rather than

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talking to friends, family or GP. Many people said that they would use this service in the future
(Talktofrank.com 2017).
However, this campaign received criticism on a large scale. The services provided by
Frank convey impartial information on the harms and effects of drugs to people, irrespective of
age with support and advice to children and young people who are at risk of drug misuse. In
addition, the money for the campaign would have been better spent on education on drugs at
grassroots level. The credibility of drugs is not proper, as it is not seriously aiming at the drug
users. Nevertheless, Frank is still present even after 10 years as it uses advertising, being the
most cost-efficient approach of raising awareness among young people and children correcting
disrupted information that they receive about drugs from peers and popular culture. This
campaign has failed to work on the prevention and intervention programmes rather it greatly
focused on the risk minimization and harm reduction that can be counterproductive. Another
criticism on Frank is that it has proved ineffectual and damaging in terms of giving information
as immediate physical effect of drugs and cost is more prominent as compared to focusing on the
danger. Concisely, this campaign is unsuccessful as it focused on illegality and penalties of using
this drug rather than explaining to children and adolescents about the ways to reduce the health
risk associated with the drugs.
Reference
Talktofrank.com. 2017. FRANK. [online] Available at: http://www.talktofrank.com/ [Accessed
19 Nov. 2017].

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Website 3
Get it is a confidential and free condom distribution scheme aided by METRO that gives
young people free and easy access to condoms in Kent & Medway. This website also provides
information about sexual health to young people for the protection against sexually transmitted
diseases (STDs) and pregnancy. In Kent County Council, free condoms are posted to individual
aged 24 years and under and registration and collection of condoms are possible from various
places like youth clubs and pharmacies from pick-up points via registration. The registration
allows young people to get an access to demonstration on how to put a condom properly
(Getit.org.uk 2017).
This campaign started with an aim to offer online and in-person services to young people
of the age 13-24 years on Chlamydia screening and free condom distribution. It helps young
people in gaining access to lube and free condoms by registering to Get it scheme and also
briefing on sexual health interventions and information on local services. Online registration and
conversations provide young people an opportunity to learn about contraception, sex and law,
unintended pregnancy and STDs. This service acknowledges the fact that young people are
sexually active from the age of 13 years and therefore, there is a need for confidential and free
services on sexual health that supports safer knowledge about sex and risk reduction. This
website is useful for young people as it helps them to gain sexual health information in a
confidential manner and access to free condoms posted to them at a given location (Getit.org.uk
2017).
This scheme is useful for the young people as it helped them to turn up against STI and
unintended pregnancy by gaining access to free condoms and useful information about sexual

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health. People are getting to know about Prep (pre-exposure prophylaxis) drug that can protect
them from HIV from Get it being a game changer so that it reduces the HIV infection and its
transmission in UK being a major threat to the country. Researchers argue that whether free
access to condoms can safeguard sexual health in UK and protect them from infections and
pregnancy. This service proved effective as young people experiment sexually and so it is
important for them to be well equipped with condom protection and advice. However, some
people argue that free condoms encourage adolescents to take chances. However, free access to
condoms has never out powered the figures of STDs and infections among the whole population
as per government records (Getit.org.uk 2017).
The Family Planning Commission in UK argues that sex education combined with
condom use is the best way to protect young people from unintended pregnancy and STDs.
However, this scheme is not working, as there are high rates of STDs and teenage pregnancy as
promotion of sexual self-respect may be effective rather than assuming that people must have
safe sex and make it safer for them. This approach provoked only handful of young people
parents complaints and advice them on proper condom use. Concisely, this scheme is great
among teenagers and young people as they sexual health services provided them free condoms
posted to them and lots of information that they could not find anywhere else (Getit.org.uk
2017).
Reference
Getit.org.uk. 2017. Get It. [online] Available at: https://getit.org.uk/ [Accessed 19 Nov. 2017].

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Website 4
Samaritans organization is a website that provides a safer platform to people to talk about
anything that get their way. The service experts talk to people in understanding their problems
and provide those options or just listen to them empathetically. Individuals get in touch with
Samaritans and tell them about what they are feeling or what has happened to them. Any
individual who feel suicidal or worried about someone can contact and reason out how to help
themselves and others. Samaritans provide services by giving them space and time to talk about
what they are going through about their problems and help them make effective decisions for
themselves (Samaritans 2017).
The callers are benefitted from the website where they inform that talking to Samaritans
changed their lives for better. Samaritans who speaks to the callers are trained putting aside their
personal beliefs and they do not provide any diagnosis, label or prescription. When callers talk to
Samaritans, they do not worry about their feelings and feel comfortable. The volunteers are very
kind to the callers and guide them what they should do. The calling services are confidential and
they feel safe while talking to Samaritans and feel supportive in curbing the negative feelings.
The service is effective as many people call and seek help from the Samaritans, as one does not
need religious beliefs to volunteer anyone. Moreover, the service is open to all people from
different faiths and no faith and Samaritans do not impose their own political, religious and
philosophical beliefs on anyone who contact those (Samaritans 2017).
This Samaritan service is helpful as it imparts confidentiality to the people talking to
them and makes them feel comfortable on how they are feeling. The callers do not have to tell
their names and there is no sharing of personal details with anyone. The things are kept private at

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the Samaritans end and replies stay anonymous. If the caller does not prefer to say their names, it
says confidential along with contact or personal details. The service gets around 5 million calls
per year and in every 52 second, one person calls who feel suicidal. The volunteers provide
emotional support to the callers who need help and are never judgmental. Callers said that the
best thing about the service is the confidentiality and anonymity of volunteers helping people
suffering from problems like depression to lead a right life and overcome their challenges.
People who experience stress in their personal or work life get help while talking to Samaritans
in leading a normal life (Samaritans 2017).
Samaritan service provides support to people in helping them to cope up with their
problems or personal experiences. The evaluation reports showed that around 71% people
reported the service as excellent or good and around 84.6% people wanted to use the service
again having high level of appreciation. Samaritans showed core values of human contact,
empathy, listening, anonymity, acceptance and confidentiality. However, the service need to
acknowledge the areas of learning and seek improvement like in-depth gap analysis for service
improvement and further research. Service specification is also required to ensure the callers and
Samaritans on what the service can and cannot provide. Samaritans require committed learning
for further research that is builds on knowledge about their services improvement.
Reference
Samaritans. 2017. Samaritans. [online] Available at: https://www.samaritans.org/ [Accessed 19
Nov. 2017].