Health

1
Health Wellbeing Research A Faculty of
Business and Economics perspective
Mike Ewing
2
BusEco and Wellbeing?

• Faculty of Business Economics
• Peninsula, Phil and Clive Hamilton
• Going up GDP growth, personal income, personal
  debt, house size, depression, divorce, work hours
• Going down QoL/happiness, block size, family
  size, sense of community..

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Building a better society requires the right
balance to be reached between
Business (employer/producer)
Government
Individuals (workers/consumers)
Thus, questions pertaining to how individuals
live, work, and consume has major
implications for all levels of business.
4
Accounting Finance

• Corporate social responsibility burgeoning
  research area.
• Triple bottom line reporting, environmental
  auditing
• How corporate practices impact on individual
  wellbeing and community/shareholder expectations.
• Growing political/community support for companies
  to be more responsible accountable for impact
  their actions have on individual wellbeing
  (Enron, AWB, HIH, US DoD..etc).
• Future research opportunities
• Formulation and evaluation of appropriate
  accounting practices and corporate governance
  processes measuring impact of business policies
  on individual/societal wellbeing.

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Business Law Taxation

• Individual wellbeing is associated with taxation
  and tax equity.
• e.g. Low taxes ? immediate reduction of
  individual financial pressures ? ? long term
  benefits.
• But, insufficient revenue to fund (a) basic
  services and (b) construct/maintain vital
  infrastructure.
• Future research opportunities
• Formulation and evaluation of policies to
  maximise taxation equity across the income
  spectrum.

6
Economics

• Policymakers the media regularly conflate
  measures of economic wellbeing, such as GDP, with
  individual/societal wellbeing.
• ButGDP was never designed for this purpose. e.g.
  wars and bushfires increase GDP!
• GDP fails to account for individual income
  distribution nor the environmental degradation
  often required to fuel growth.
• Future research opportunities
• Formulation of alternative measures of economic
  wellbeing that assess the economy the health
  and wellbeing of individuals the condition of
  the environment income disparities.
• National happiness index?

7
Management

• Individual wellbeing is connected to the
  provision of fulfilling and satisfying work.
• Workplace wellbeing encapsulates a broad range of
  issues
• (a) absenteeism employee turnover medical,
  disability, and workers' compensation programs.
• (b) work-place flexibility - including such
  issues as maternity/paternity leave
  carers/sick leave etc.
• (c) societal costs of unemployment/retrenchments/
  redundancy.
• Future research opportunities
• Work-life balance, best practice for the
  implementation of employee benefits
  identification of further reforms that could
  improve individual employee wellbeing.

8
Marketing

• Burgeoning research areas include
• (a) Non-for-profit/voluntary sector and social
  marketing issues (see www.social-marketing.org).
• (b) The unintended and/or negative consequences
  of marketing (e.g. anti-consumption research, see
  www.icar.auckland.ac.nz).
• (c) The discouragement of materialism promotion
  of more ethical and responsible advertising.
• (d) Health promotion.

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Health promotion

• This exciting area of research is capable of
  attracting competitive research funding from a
  range of sources industry, NGOs, Philanthropic
  and Government sources.
• The World Health Organisation has conceptualised
  health as a vital resource for living and
  attaining individual capacity.
• The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986)
  the Bangkok Charter for Health Promotion in a
  Globalised World (2005) recognised health
  promotion as an invaluable tool to improve the
  health status of individuals and communities.

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An example of.

• Opportunities for inter-disciplinary research
• Journal of Consumer Research (JCR)Consumer
  welfare special issue
• Journal of Business Research (JBR)Anti-consumptio
  n special Issue

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Possible topics

• Organisational disidentification / boycotting
• Brand avoidance / activism (Klein, Morse,
  Spurgen)
• Voluntary simplification (downshifting / sea
  change)
• Demarketing
• Dissatisfaction / exiting / grudge-holding /
  retaliation
• Innovation resistance and technophobia
• Risk aversion towards genetically modified foods
• Social Marketing to promote responsible
  consumption/behaviour
• Overbuying, materialistic and emulative consumer
  behaviour
• Gambling
• Excessive tobacco / alcohol / food consumption
• AIDS / STDs

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My own interests

• Early career - Australian public sector
• Social marketing
• Health promotion
• ARC-DPs
• The Weighty Issue of Childhood Obesity An
  Investigation of the Role of Junk Food
  Advertising
• Using Advertising to Negatively Reconstruct
  Memories of Risky and High-risk Drinking Amongst
  Australia's Youth A New Intervention Strategy
• Identifying elements of alcohol advertising that
  mediate positive attitudes towards alcohol
  consumption by underage youth
• Papers/studies
• DTC advertising of oral sexuopharmaceuticals
  (JA) using ambient advertising to increase the
  personal perception of risk of HIV/AIDS infection
  (IJoA) impact of behavioural determinants on
  antiretroviral uptake and adherence in Kenya,
  mens health in Mildura, gender and health
  messaging, de-stigmatising depression, etc.

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Where to from here?

• Continue to increase critical mass / build
  momentum _at_ Peninsula
• Continue to forge stronger links with compatible
  public/private sector institutions on Peninsula
  (Peninsula Health, M F shires)
• Forge stronger links with other BusEco campuses
• Forge stronger links with other Peninsula
  Faculties/schools
• Closer integration of the above with head
  office (CC)
• i.e. true inter-disciplinary, multi-campus
  research