Using football to promote good health
Doctor’s seem to have found the best remedy to get men to get their health checked. It seems men for some reason don’t like to go in for regular health checks. Maybe we think we have some sort of invincibility shield around us and think we don’t need to go see a doctor, we’ll be fine. Sometimes this sort of thinking can get men into a serious problem because men need to go in for regular health checks and we don’t go as often as we should. But there is now an innovative solution to the problem of how to get men to have regular health checks.
Football; yes that is the brilliant solution to this problem of getting men to have regular health checks. Someone probably figured that men don’t like getting health checks but they do love football so maybe they won’t mind getting their health checked at a football game. It sounds like a really good idea, before the game starts; set up a tent outside the match and offer a free health check up to anyone who wants one. This is a very ingenious way to get someone to do something they don’t want to, it is actually a very primitive initiative, offer someone something good along with something they don’t want to do and they will be much more likely to do the thing they don’t want to as well. This very thing was tried recently and an article explained what happened.
The article stated that an initiative was tried outside a football match recently. “This weekend one of the biggest football clubs in the world, Chelsea, play in the UK's FA Cup final. At their home games this season, their fans have been able to get a health check free of charge, from staff on a bus from the Chelsea and Westminster hospital,” (http://news.bbc.co.uk /2/hi/health/8680970.stm). This was a great way to get people interested in their health and doing it outside a football match seemed to have gone down very well. This is not a new thing to happen. I remember a blood drive initiative happening in a bus outside my school when I was younger but by targeting a segment of society that doesn’t usually get their health checked it was something very positive.
It is strange to think why men don’t like going in for health checks but this health check bus really worked in the favour of the hospital offering the health checks to men. The reason why it was so successful was that instead of spending resources to try to get men to come into the hospital for the health checks, the hospital brought the health checks to the men. This is a simple business principle because in business it is always easier to sell something to people when you go to them instead of having them come to you. This is why door to door salesmen and internet shopping is so popular and there must have been a few MBAs on the panel at the hospital that came up with this idea.
It is very important for men to have health checks at regular intervals and what is funny to notice that they were getting health checks before they went into watch a very physically demanding and strenuous activity. You would think that watching all those very physically fit football players running around for 90 minutes nonstop would inspire these men to think about their health and get a check up, but the hospital didn’t worry about all that, they offered a service to men at a place where they knew it would be taken up a lot more seriously than if they had asked the men to come into the hospital. Then suddenly they would have been hearing a lot of excuses about why the men couldn’t come in for the check. This way everyone won by using a very intelligent and unique initiative by the hospital.
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