May 2005

Poor healthcare education a key barrier to weight loss

Poor healthcare education and lack of motivation are the major barriers to weight loss, causing weight loss to be a low priority among Americans, even though 72 percent of Americans are overweight and up to 39 percent are in the obese category. These deductions come from the recently released 2005 Yankelovich Preventative Healthcare Study.

The Yankelovich research, which polled 6,000 consumers, reveals that only 30 percent of Americans are actively trying to lose weight. Equally surprising, when respondents were asked to rank the top 10 ways to maintain health, diet (39 percent) and exercise (34 percent) didn’t even make the list. Instead, “maintaining personal hygiene and cleanliness” (64 percent) “maintaining a positive attitude” (58 percent) and “maintaining/cultivating good family relationships (53 percent) topped the list, with diet and exercise placing a distant 13th and 17th, respectively.

Steve Bodhaine, Group President of Yankelovich and Director of The Segmentation Company (TSC), a division of Yankelovich, which provides proprietary needs-based segmentation solutions, presented the findings at the Consumer Healthcare Products Association’s Regulatory and Scientific Conference in Washington, D.C.

“Mass marketing techniques are ineffective in motivating the general public to adopt preventative healthcare behaviors,” said Bodhaine.

According to the study, the two main barriers to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight tend to be motivation and education, noted Susan Lee Simpson, PhD, senior account director at Yankelovich.

In terms of motivation, major barriers include:

Barriers arising from misunderstanding or lack of education include:

“We are battling a lack of health education,” Bodhaine added. “Almost 65 percent of people have never been to a nutrition class and about half have never taken an exercise or fitness class.”

Source: Yankelovich, Inc., www.yankelovich.com