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The United Kingdom has a long and evolving history of public health education. From the initiation of formal standardised training for Medical Officers for Health in the early 1900s, to the current national public health training programme, public health education has adapted to the changing contexts of public health practice. Whilst the profession was originally only a medical specialty, subsequent recognition of the skills and contribution of the wider public health workforce has led to changes in professional specialist training for public health,which is now open to non-medical applicants. This well-established professional training scheme allows the formal accreditation of competence in a broad range of public health skills. The academic component of public health training is provided by a rapidly growing number of postgraduate courses. Once confined to the UK's first school of public health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a handful of British Universities, the current 60 or so courses across the country are found in diverse university settings. Quality and standards in higher education are monitored by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education but there are no other professional accreditation schemes for postgraduate courses in public health nationally. Public health education and training continues to face challenges in the UK, notably the current government plans for major restructuring of the National Health Service (NHS) which threatens the loss of traditional NHS training placements and has created uncertainty around how professional training might be structured in the future.Whilst the long established tradition of public health education and more recent adoption of competency-based approaches to training gives some flexibility to meet these challenges, insight and innovative responses are required to ensure that public health education and training are not destabilised by these challenges. Revisions of the curricula of post graduate courses and the competencies required for professional accreditation along with provision of experience in the new locations where public health is to be practiced in the future will be 3 key to ensuring that public health professionals are ready to tackle the key issues that confront them.
BackgroundThere is a growing evidence base that alcohol advertising increases consumption, particularly amongst young people. Alcohol companies are increasingly using social media, such as Facebook, as a critical part of their marketing campaigns. The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) states that alcohol advertising must not link alcohol with social success. However, by using a platform which is inherently social, alcohol companies can implicitly link their brand with these concepts. This study aimed to describe the nature and extent of alcohol advertising on Facebook.MethodsA quantitative descriptive analysis of UK Facebook brand pages of the highest volume sales brand for spirits, beer and cider (Smirnoff GB, Carling and Strongbow respectively) amongst the key Facebook user demographics (18–25 year olds). We collected all status updates for each brand page over a month. These appeared on the Newsfeed of those who Like the brand. The status updates were coded using concepts expressed in the ASA standards, the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) Code and the alcohol marketing literature. The frequencies of the identified categories were then calculated for each brand and for all three brands. The numbers of likes and comments of each status was also recorded.Results85 status updates were collected. The average number of status updates each day was 0.94 overall. The number of people receiving these updates at the time of writing is in total 881,398. The total number of likes and comments is 12,984 and 4,780 respectively. The most frequently occurring code was a reference to the Carling Cup. The codes used that refer to enhanced social or sexual success (which is in contravention of the ASA rules) were references to ‘dating’ and ‘partying’. These occurred less often. All the brands encouraged user interaction by asking users a question (32 updates, 37.6% of all posts) and ‘fill in the gap’ statuses.ConclusionThis initial research suggests that the alcohol industry is using Facebook to engage with a large number of young consumers through frequent status updates. There is some evidence that the content on the pages is in contravention of ASA regulations. Further research needs to be conducted in this area in order to determine the effect that alcohol marketing via social media is having on levels of consumption of alcohol and initiation of consumption by young people in order to provide strong evidence for tightening ASA standards that reflect the advancement of alcohol advertising using Facebook.
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