Promoting Public Health in the U.K

Task 3 – Public Health

There are many different ways of promoting and protecting public health, these vary from health promotion and activities to specific protection. The most common and obvious way to promote public health is through the media, for example making advertisement for the television or the radio, and through using news updates. Another common way of promoting public health is through the internet, as well as advertisement on web pages, there are also many easy to use websites for advice such as the BBC or the NHS. Magazines and newspapers are also common in finding information on protecting public health, and can be very useful as not everyone has access to a television or a computer/laptop. In many magazines they have weekly articles on how to get fit, or ‘lose weight the healthy way’ and in many cases these can be useful articles. Sometimes there are reports in newspapers and magazines as well, most commonly are ways to prevent diseases and ill health, such as lung cancer by stopping smoking. In some magazines and newspapers they print statistics as a tactic to possibly scare the public as a way of promoting public health. A very common example of the promotion of public health are the true life stories that most magazines these days have, in which ordinary people discus how their life was ruined for example by ill health or disease and they have turned their life around, this is a very effective way of promoting public health as it reaches people on a personal level. There is also a downside when it comes to public health in regards to magazines. In almost every magazine in almost every issue there are picture of famous people in on the red carpet or in a photo shoot, and quite often they have been airbrushed, when young people look at these images they aspire to be like them and to look like them, even though every body is different and it is impossible to look exactly the same as someone else, as a result of this an