
Health Awareness Days: Sufficient Evidence to Support the Craze?
Author(s) -
Jonathan Purtle,
Leah A. Roman
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
american journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.284
H-Index - 264
eISSN - 1541-0048
pISSN - 0090-0036
DOI - 10.2105/ajph.2015.302621
Subject(s) - scrutiny , health promotion , public health , intervention (counseling) , social determinants of health , perspective (graphical) , health policy , ideology , health education , medicine , public relations , scale (ratio) , health equity , environmental health , psychology , nursing , political science , politics , law , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , computer science
Health awareness initiatives are a ubiquitous intervention strategy. Nearly 200 health awareness days, weeks, and months are on the US National Health Observances calendar, and more than 145 awareness day bills have been introduced in Congress since 2005. We contend that health awareness days are not held to appropriate scrutiny given the scale at which they have been embraced and are misaligned with research on the social determinants of health and the tenets of ecological models of health promotion. We examined health awareness days from a critical public health perspective and offer empirically supported recommendations to advance the intervention strategy. If left unchecked, health awareness days may do little more than reinforce ideologies of individual responsibility and the false notion that adverse health outcomes are simply the product of misinformed behaviors.