Encouraging hand hygiene to minimise illness
Champs Public Health Collaborative
- Quantitative Research
Brief
Concerned that a rise in seasonal illnesses would threaten to overwhelm its services throughout winter, health chiefs in Cheshire and Merseyside wanted to understand the population’s attitudes to prevent the spread of illnesses such as Flu and Norovirus
Challenge
Influential’s Insights team conducted primary research with 1,000 members of the public about their attitudes to winter illness and personal hygiene.
These behavioural insights revealed:
- Concern about future outbreaks was high but varied significantly by age and ethnicity
- Handwashing was not considered to be one of the most effective mitigation strategies to prevent illness
- Messaging that empowered people works, but fear is also a powerful motivator
- Younger people were now less likely to wash their hands as regularly as they did during the pandemic
This gave us a core target audience to focus on (young people) and demonstrated a need to remind people that they could play a role in reducing the spread of illnesses.
Crucially, it also showed that, following numerous national public information campaigns during COVID-19, there was a palpable sense of ‘message fatigue’ around handwashing and sanitising surfaces.
Using this insight, we launched the award-winning Simple Things campaign.
Find out more about the Simple Things campaign
