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152 CHAPTER 7 ■ Choose Health in Food Vending Machines

contributions of Italian experts, professionals, and operators. The research area has
developed two working tools—a Web site (www.marketingsociale.net) and a
newsletter—and organizes periodical conventions, focusing on the following
themes:

• Applying social marketing to health promotion activities.
• Enhancing public health communication.
• Organizational models.
• Impact of socioeconomic inequities on health status and the role of
communication.
• Communication evaluation.
• Communication of social responsibility.
• Appropriate practices.

Moreover, to collect and enhance health promotion activities that use social market-
ing principles, the Italian Association of Public and Institutional Communication
and the Local Health Unit of Modena organize an annual national competition,
denominated “Health Marketing,” which reached its fourth edition in 2007.
Overall, more than 220 projects took part in that initiative to give proof of the in-
creasing interest toward this innovative strategy.

CASE STUDY
Choose Health

This case study involves an experimental social marketing project, Choose
Health, aimed at transforming vending machines into a tool for preventing obe-
sity and promoting healthy lifestyles in schools, workplaces, and universities
through the delivery of communication activities and the introduction of
healthy products (see Figure 7-1).

CAM PAI G N B AC KG R O U N D , PU R PO S E , AN D FO C U S

The WHO estimated that unhealthy habits—being overweight or underweight,
not eating enough fruits and vegetables, physical inactivity, smoking, and drink-
ing alcohol—account for almost 50% of all diseases in men and for 25% in
women (measured as disability-adjusted life-years, or DALY) in developed
European countries (WHO, 2002).