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Academics claim that a $6 million Federal Government healthy lifestyle advertising campaign aimed at children has been a waste of public money.

Results soon to be published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport and presented at the upcoming "be active '07", scientific conference in Adelaide, suggest that the 'Get Moving' TV advertisement, was not effective in influencing children's behaviour immediately after viewing.

Investigators, Dr Evan Atlantis from The University of Sydney's Faculty of Health Science along with researchers from The University of Sydney's School of Public Health and Deakin University, conducted a study in a Sydney public school towards the end of the 'Get Moving' campaign, in June 2006. Half the child participants viewed a 25 minute Simpsons episode embedded with three Get Moving advertisements, and the other half viewed the same episode without the Get Moving advertisements.

The child participants were then shown pictures of children playing ball games, playing on a trampoline, riding a bike and riding a scooter, watching TV/DVD, surfing the internet, and playing video games, and were asked to indicate which of these choices they would prefer to do right now, and to rate how much they liked or disliked each of these choices. The children were then observed for 10 minutes after being told that they could spend some or all of this time on any of these choices, which were then made available to them.

The investigators found that there were no trends towards significant effects of the 'Get Moving' advertisement on children's preferences, ratings of liking, and time spent in physical activities and in sedentary behaviours assessed immediately after exposure. Dr. Atlantis concludes that these results, as well as a lack of other levels of scientific evidence, suggest that such advertisements are unlikely to cause long-term healthy lifestyle changes, and therefore are a waste of money.

"TV advertisements for health promotion have the potential to reach large numbers of children given the amount of time they spend watching TV, however, more research is needed if such campaigns are to ever going to work. For example, what marketing content do children and adolescents respond to most? What is the minimum dose of exposure required? How do health promotion advertisements perform alongside so much coexisting marketing for unhealthy lifestyle choices? These are just several important questions that need to be addressed, to help develop effective mass media campaigns for causing even modest improvements in population levels of unhealthy lifestyle", he said.

Although Dr Atlantis acknowledges that spending $6 million AUD on a media campaign was a substantial government investment, he asserts much more is needed on a continuous basis given the rising economic burden and serious health implications of physical inactivity. "It makes sense to target physical activity levels in young Australians, because there is evidence showing that inactive children grow up to become inactive adults. However, the Australian government should first look at funding research to develop more effective mass media campaigns, to then justify funding such public health initiatives in the future" said Dr Atlantis.

He couldn't find any scientific rationale for this mass media campaign and calls for a more robust and systematic approach in future, to ensure that public health initiatives are based on good science.

"Government funding commitments for health promotion should be long-term, continuous, and proportionate to the economic burden of the disease or risk factor being targeted, and should be periodically evaluated for cost-effectiveness. The 'Get Moving' campaign met none of these important criteria," said Dr Atlantis.