Older Adults' Perceptions of a Church-Based Social Marketing Initiative to Prevent Falls Through Balance and Strength Classes.

Despite evidence that balance and strength training and other multicomponent exercise classes reduce the risk and rate of falls and fall-related injuries, few older adults participate. To increase uptake of balance- and strength-based fall-prevention classes, we designed and implemented a social marketing program, delivered through churches. Diverse stakeholders in this social marketing initiative included class participants, instructors, church leaders and members, and public health and recreation partners.

Factors Associated With Older Adults' Enrollment in Balance Classes to Prevent Falls: Case-Control Study.

Balance training decreases fall risk among older adults, but few participate in such training. We examined the association of exposure to social marketing to promote balance classes, personal characteristics and other factors, with older adults' balance class participation. Adults aged ⩾60 years were eligible for this case-control study if they attended any church enrolled in a trial testing the effect of social marketing on balance class participation.

Church-based social marketing to motivate older adults to take balance classes for fall prevention: cluster randomized controlled trial.

Objective: Determine whether a church-based social marketing program increases older adults' participation in balance classes for fall prevention.

Methods: In 2009-10, 51 churches (7101 total members aged ≥ 60) in Colorado, U.S.

Understanding fall meaning and context in marketing balance classes to older adults.

This study explored older, community-dwelling adults' attitudes and values about proposed church-delivered balance classes for fall prevention. Community observation, group interviews with stakeholders, key informant interviews, and focus groups with church members ≥ 60 years of age were analyzed in two ways: first for inductive themes expressing community sentiment about fall prevention for older adults, then for content useful in creating locally tailored social marketing messages. Four themes expressed perceptions of fall-prevention programming: de-emphasizing fall risk and emphasizing strength and independence, moving older adults out of their "comfort zones" to join classes, identifying relationships to support fall-prevention activities, and considering gender-based differences in approaches to fall prevention.

Communication and marketing as tools to cultivate the public's health: a proposed "people and places" framework.

Background: Communication and marketing are rapidly becoming recognized as core functions, or core competencies, in the field of public health. Although these disciplines have fostered considerable academic inquiry, a coherent sense of precisely how these disciplines can inform the practice of public health has been slower to emerge.

Discussion: In this article we propose a framework--based on contemporary ecological models of health--to explain how communication and marketing can be used to advance public health objectives.