This site deals with my research interests, which are centred around social marketing, the delivery of health & social services and encouraging behaviour change.
So I am interested in two key managerial areas, social marketing and co-production, and the possible role that religion can play in the delivery of social marketing campaigns and co-production initiatives.
Relevance to practitioners Faith leaders and workers and people in statutory organisations such as NHS Trusts are increasingly working together for the delivery of services and undertaking social marketing / health promotion campaigns. My research is designed to understand such work and the research outcomes are supposed to help improve the ways in which such people and organisations can co-operate.
The Importance of this Work
There are increasingly moves towards having health and social services provided by non-state organisations, including community groups, religious organisations and so on. Such work is being undertaken within an overall framework of people being able to choose who they receive such services from.
That element of choice brings in a role for marketing. Surprisingly marketing is not just about selling fizzy drinks and advertising. The underlying principles can be used to do things like promote behaviour change towards healthier lifestyles. Marketing as a discipline also offers various theories, concepts and tools that can be used to understand the relationships between formal healthcare organisations, informal community groups and the people they are both seeking to serve.
This site explores each of these issues in some more detail. Because it's important to share a common understanding of terms, in various places on this site, I'll put up yellow boxes such as those below, which give the definitions of key concepts that I am using. These can often be defined differently in different disciplines, the ones I am using are predominantly from a managerial perspective.