Staying Healthy

‘No more niggles’ pharmacy campaign

Background

In April 2010, the Department of Health invited PCTs to apply to participate in a national pilot to explore ways to raise the profile of community pharmacy amongst specific segments of the population.

The need for this piece of work was highlighted in national research which showed varying levels of awareness about what community pharmacies could offer, as well as varying levels of service use amongst different groups of people. Click here to read more about the national research.  

NHS North Yorkshire and York was one of just three PCTs selected to take part in the initiative, based on our proposal to target middle-aged men.

Scope

Our campaign targets men aged 40-55 living in Scarborough and aims to raise awareness of health advice and signposting services offered by community pharmacies.

Research shows that men are classed as ‘pharmacy avoiders’, both in terms of frequency of visits made to a pharmacy and the level of interaction with staff and services on offer when they do visit.

Objectives

The overarching objective of this campaign is to improve the health and wellbeing of men living in Scarborough by using community pharmacy as means to engage men in the health system.

It’s common knowledge that the earlier a health condition is identified, the better the outcome tends to be. We are also aware that men tend to be less proactive in getting concerns and symptoms checked out and therefore health conditions can go undetected for many years, making the outcome less positive.

Research

To better understand men’s perceptions towards their health, their attitudes towards accessing health services and more specifically pharmacy, we undertook an in-depth piece of research.

This research highlighted a number of barriers which prevented men accessing health services from their local pharmacy:

• Male stoicism – it’s ‘not ok’ for men to be overly attentive to their health

• Fear – the men we spoke to would prefer not to know if they had something seriously wrong with them, and therefore tended to ‘brush their concerns under the carpet’

• Lack of awareness of what services were available from pharmacy – sense that they are just there to dispense prescriptions

• Misconception that pharmacists aren’t qualified health professionals and wouldn’t be able to offer sound health advice

Our research also highlighted the key role that men’s wives and partners play in managing their health, and they would often get health related products on the man’s behalf.

Delivery

We used our research to develop campaign materials that would appeal to our target audience and change their attitudes and behaviour towards accessing service from their local pharmacy.

Our approach took a simple, straight-to-the-point approach and pitched pharmacy as a quick and simple solution to getting health concerns sorted. The ‘no more niggles’ concept was developed to fit with men’s familiarity with DIY products and was applied to a range of advertising methods that would get the message in front of our target audience. These included:

• Beer mats

• Take-away sandwich bags

• Urinal stickers

• Advertising in local newspaper sport sections

• Bus street-liners

• Town centre flyer distribution using our team of ‘no more niggles’ promo people

• Large pharmacy window stickers

As our research highlighted the important role men’s wives play in managing their health, our in-store activity focussed on engaging with women using a rather tongue-in-cheek point of sale. This acted as a talking point in the hope that women would act as an indirect channel through which we could deliver the message to men.

Timescales and evaluation

The campaign runs for three months until mid-May. We are currently undertaking an evaluation exercise and will share the findings on this website once complete.

If you have any questions about this campaign, please contact alex.trewhitt@nyypct.nhs.uk

[Go To Top]

©North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust

Site Visitors

provided by nyypct.nhs.uk