Public and User Involvement in Health Care Essay

Public and User Involvement in Health Care - Essay Example Some recently published official reports admit that the government could not effectively convince people to give up bad health behaviours like consumption of unhealthy food and alcoholic beverages. Evidently this health trend would negatively contribute to the overall wellbeing of the UK population, and the government would lose millions of pounds for nothing. This paper will describe why educating people on the health risks of certain behaviours may not necessarily help reduce such risks. To make the points clear, this paper will give particular attention to certain behaviours like alcohol addiction, smoking, substance abuse, fast food consumption, premarital sex, and sexual promiscuity. The UK government spends a notable percent of its revenues on health awareness programmes with intent to eliminate future healthcare costs. The government tries to promote positive health messages mainly through television Ads because majority of the UK citizens spend a considerable amount of their time on TV programmes. The UK government jointly operates with many social interest organisations to control unhealthy behaviours like alcohol consumption and smoking in the society. As part of these health campaigns, health authorities and other volunteer groups organise road shows and other major promotional events to influence people. While analysing the UK government’s health spending over the last few decades, it seems that the government spent largely on the promotion of healthy food patterns. Since 1997, the UK government has been introducing a series of high-profile health campaigns to improve food pattern, â€Å"including Health Action Zones in poor food areas, the five-a -day fruit and vegetables campaign, the school fruit programme, and the change4life campaign on obesity† (Hickman, . 2010). However reports indicate that spending of millions of pounds of public money on these health campaigns has had little effect on the overall public