Their Mission is:
To improve the lives of people with diabetes and to work towards a future without diabetes.
Their Vision is:
To set people free from the restrictions of diabetes
• The highest quality care and information for all
• An end to discrimination and ignorance
• Universal understanding of diabetes and of Diabetes UK
• A world without diabetes
Their Values are:
• To put the interests of people with diabetes first
• To be the best source of information on diabetes
• To work in partnership with all those affected by diabetes
• To help people to help themselves
• To be open, ethical, honest and accountable
• To recognise and respect the value and diversity of all
• To appreciate the skills, expertise and commitment of their staff and volunteers
The charity aims to help and care for people with diabetes and their families, to represent and campaign for their interests, and to fund research into the condition. It does all this through their website, roadshows every year and the many leaflets they produce.
Lloyd Pharmacy Health Promotion
Overview
Lloyds Pharmacy is one of the UK’s most well known chemists.
The boast that 22% of the UK live within the immediate catchment area of a Lloyds Pharmacy.
There are over 1500 pharmacies.
These are located primarily in the community and local health centres up and down the country.
So they are pretty much everywhere.
What Impact Did The Promotion Have?
Lloyds Pharmacy have been promoting their ‘missing million’ campaign.
1 million is said to be the number of people living in the UK with diabetes but are unaware of their condition.
Lloyds have been running their diabetes promotion since November 2003.
Using posters and leaflets dispersed throughout health centres and pharmacies nationwide, with relatively small success.
But after running their campaign on prime time TV and raising awareness of their free diabetes screening service.
(Famous TV presenter Phillippa Forester spearheaded this)
The uptake on testing was tremendous.
(This is the way to get a message across, advertising in the middle of Coronation Street).
A Clear Message
A clear message was promoted to the public.
With useful, informative and well presented information given out.
This raised the profile of diabetes.
(Who was really aware of the condition and symptoms before, unless you or your family/friends suffer from diabetes)?
The campaign actively targeted specific members of the public.
(How did the campaign do this?)
By homing in on the symptoms associated with the condition for example:
Increased thirst, excessive urination, extreme tiredness, blurred vision, recurrent thrush, weight loss and so on.
It did this by promoting the advertisement with leaflets along side the TV advert,(here is some leaflets on the free diabetes test) listing all the symptoms and saying about the free testing.
Firstly, you would be asked if you was under 16 or pregnant. In these cases you would be referred straight to your G.P. Then you would fill in the request form for a diabetes test and have a random test done, if the result is below 6, your likely not to have diabetes and no further action is needed unless it is felt you need to change your lifestyle,(e.g exercise,drinking and eating habits) they will give you some suggestions on this. If its above 6, you will need to get another test done, called a fasting test. For this you have nothing to eat or drink for at least 10 hours. If this result is over 7, you probably have diabetes and they would refer you to your doctors. Here is a request form for the test to be done.
Who Was The Campaign Targeting?
Targeting people who feel they may fit some or all of the symptoms suggested, narrows the field and helps to yield a higher positive diagnosis rate.
(If you fit the criteria, you are more likely to have diabetes, rather than simply asking everyone and anyone to have a test done).
Although not made completely clear by the campaign, you do have to be over 16/not pregnant to partake in the free testing.
How effective was the promotion?
So overall, an effective promotion has been run by, Lloyds Pharmacy.
750,000 people have been tested to date.
And of these, 30,000 people have been referred for further testing (usually having type 1 or type 2 diabetes, type 2 is the most common).
The effectiveness of this campaign can be seen through the figures of the customers tested.
Of the 750,000 customers, 4% have been diagnosed as having some form of diabetes thanks to this health promotion.
People who now know they have diabetes thanks to this campaign.
Which means they can now manage their condition and hopefully avoid some of the worst complications associated with un-managed diabetes.
4% doesn’t sound like a high percentage but 30,000 people are now as we said (in our earlier statement)
“Empowered through education so that person can use this knowledge to make informed choices and decisions regarding their own personal health for the better”.
So, 750,000 people have, through a health promotion been made aware of and educated, in some of the symptoms, causes and possible complications of diabetes and then taken it upon themselves to go into a Lloyds Pharmacy and take a test.
These people may not have even considered that their symptoms were anything other than stress or general fatigue etc.
The success of this campaign is not only the 30,000 people positively diagnosed but also the other 720,000 people who took the test, who are at least thinking about diabetes and their own lifestyles including: exercise, eating habits etc.
We believe, this campaign has been, and continues to be, a success in health promotion.
Analysis
What does Lloyds Pharmacy Have To Gain?
Now what does Lloyds Pharmacy have to gain?
Well, Lloyds Pharmacy is owned by, Celesio AG.
These are the largest pharmaceutical wholesaler in Europe.
Companies of this size have huge financial resources at their disposal, enabling expensive advertising campaigns on primetime TV.
The purpose of the campaign it appears is to promote the condition, diabetes.
But is it not also promoting Lloyds Pharmacy.
Under Lloyds Pharmacy’s own campaign slogan ‘Champion The Health Of The UK’ offering free diabetes tests to anyone, over the age of 16/not pregnant, this builds a feeling of confidence within the general public.
The public may feel they are dealing with an honest and straight-forward company, who have only your best health interests at heart.
Maybe they do, but they are a business at the end of the day.
These reassurances that huge companies try to build into the public mind may be the reason you choose to buy your products from Lloyds Pharmacy over any other pharmacy.
An extra 750,000 customers coming through your doors and being exposed to any products and promotions on display, can’t be a bad thing for the business.
It would be unrealistic to assume a company as large and profitable as Celesio AG, who own Lloyds Pharmacy, would spend time and vast amounts of money targeting a health issue that is essentially a governmental problem, without there being some financial benefit gained by the company.
In building up trust and respectabilty from the public, then encourages more customers through the door (and so increases the profits for Lloyds), what may appear on the surface to be a genuine public awareness campaign could, probably be, a clever sales and marketing ploy.
The profits for the company have increases year on year since the introduction of the diabetes campaign.
Coincidence?
Maybe, but doubtful!
Company Profits
This next slide shows the profits of the company owned by Lloyds Pharmacies over the last few years.
A cynic may suggest that providing primetime TV advertisements from a NGO regarding public health issues and convincing the public to look inwardly to any health anomalies they may have, and to self assess for any ailments, which may just be a result of normal living, could be seen as a sinister attempt to encourage customers through the doors at Lloyds, who incidentally would cater for all your drug and product treatment needs with an array of profitable products on display to choose from in any one of their 1520 stores located nationwide.
Is it all about profit?
Well selling sun glasses does I suppose, provide a tenuous link to health promotion, eye safety, UV rays and all that but
Where does photo processing fit into health care?
These items and many more are found in nearly all Lloyds Pharmacies.
Summary
The health campaign run by Lloyd’s Pharmacy was beneficial to public health and successfully raised the profile and awareness of diabetes.
It sent out a clear message (if you are suffering any of the listed symptoms, come and have a test).
750,000 people have been tested since the campaign has been run, proving a substantial impact.
This type of campaign had a good public response and demonstrates the effectiveness of primetime TV advertisements.
The longer-term health promotion should continue through education and further health promotions to continue the assessment and monitoring of diabetes.
