Pegasus – a UK top ten healthcare communications consultancy - has launched Healthscapes®
Healthscapes identifies six key factors - time, place, action, family impact, personal risk and coping strategies - as being critical for understanding decision-making behaviour. The research and development behind the model has revealed that by framing questions around these key themes, marketing and communications consultants can uncover a greater depth of insight and establish a more robust understanding of the audiences they are trying to reach. The model has been designed to work across the complete health spectrum - from those taking prescription medicines or managing long-term conditions, through to others making simple, healthy, lifestyle changes around nutrition or skincare regimes.
Understanding the key motivations and influences behind people’s individual decision making is more vital than ever for anyone operating in the health sector, especially considering the increase in lifestyle-related diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes (a huge financial burden requiring greater emphasis on measurable outcomes) and the rise of social media – making people better informed, better connected and more likely to play a greater role in decisions concerning their health.
Stuart Hehir, head of creative and digital comments, “A huge increase in economic pressure has led to a much greater emphasis on cautious investment and measurable outcomes, which in turn demands a more rigorous approach to marcomms planning. While healthcare professionals and the broader policy landscape continue to play a crucial role in the health of our nation, no-one can deny the growing influence of the individual in the health decision-making process. Healthscapes has been developed to address this shift and to help communicators get to the real root of all the influencing factors at play.”
Born from qualitative and quantitative research spanning four months - including an extensive literature review, four patient focus groups and a survey of 10,000 people - Healthscapes was developed after the research failed to find an existing model that met the specific needs of the teams at Pegasus. The final Healthscapes model builds on work by Professor Linda McKie (Glasgow Caledonian University) and others, in the paper - Starting Well: Gender, Care and Health in the Family Context. To validate the model prior to launch, four health conditions / issues were chosen to test and pilot the methodology:
Stuart Hehir, continues, “Healthscapes is being rolled out internally and will rapidly become integrated into our day to day processes. We will be offering a copy of the research report and introduction sessions to all our clients and we are looking into a larger seminar or workshop event. As we move forwards, this model will become the backbone of all our consumer and patient-focussed campaigns, ensuring we continue to deliver in our mission of inspiring people to make the right healthy decisions for them.”
ENDS
For a copy of the Healthscapes research report or to find out more about Pegasus, please contact Stuart Hehir: shehir@pegasuspr.co.uk and Lisa Bradley: lbradley@pegasuspr.co.uk
Press enquiries: Amy Seaman - Tel: (01903) 821550 / amyseaman@pegasuspr.co.uk
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We are a UK top ten healthcare consultancy that's passionate about inspiring people to make the right health decisions – it’s all we do. In 2010, we received two 'best place to work' accolades from PR Week and the Holmes Report.
