Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Health Canada developed a social marketing campaign to promote food skills and nutrition to Canadian parents with young children. The Eat Well Campaign: Food Skills campaign was advertised to parents from 2013 to 2014 with the help of Health Canada's partners from the retail food industry, the media and health organizations. The purpose of this study was to describe the facilitators and barriers that Health Canada's partners experienced while working on the Eat Well Campaign. A sample of 21 partners participated in semi-structured interviews that were recorded and transcribed word-for-word. Word analysis software was used to analyse the interviews by dividing the text fragments that were tagged with codes. These codes were used to identify facilitators and barriers of working on the Eat Well Campaign. The five facilitating themes that emerged were related to resources, partners, Health Canada, the partnership and the intervention. Among these themes, the most facilitating subthemes were the nature of the campaign, good communication with Health Canada, good quality materials, good relationships with Health Canada and the understanding, flexible and implicated character of the partners. The emergent barriers varried greatly. The most significant barriers were related to time (tight timeline, information provided too late by HC and delays) and limited financial resources. Other important barriers included issues with the Eat Well Campaign messaging, the lack of visibility of the campaign, competing priorities with the campaing and Health Canada's approval process. In conclusion, when partners collaborate with agencies like Health Canada, they are likely to appreciate the opportunity to build a relationship with them. Minimizing barriers such as tight timelines and the approval process will make working with Health Canada on public health promotion activities easier, which will likely enhance the impacts of their collaborative initiatives.