Social marketing guide for public health programme managers and practitioners

The ECDC Social Marketing guide provides public health programme managers and practitioners with a summary of social marketing concepts and approaches. The guide introduces key principles and action steps that can be applied when considering, implementing and/or evaluating social marketing approaches as a part of communicable disease prevention activities or other public health programmes. Social marketing is defined as an approach that seeks to integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviours that benefit individuals and communities for social good. This approach draws on data about beliefs, attitudes and behaviours, behavioural theory, and experiential evidence, about what works and doesn't work in changing behaviours, to develop public health interventions. Social marketing also incorporates input from end-users, stakeholders, partners and an analysis of external competitive forces that either encourage or restrict desired behaviours. The guide has three parts. Part 1 introduces the basic social marketing principles and concepts. Part 2 focuses on presenting a logical framework for applying social marketing in the development and implementation of communicable disease and other public health interventions. Part 3 provides a compendium of workflow sheets, checklists and memory aides to support public health programme managers and practitioners in undertaking these activities.