Developing community-level social marketing messages to raise awareness of asthma in older Australians: preliminary results

Background: While asthma awareness campaigns are generally aimed at children and their parents, asthma affects a similar proportion of older adults, often with more severe health consequences. Adults aged 55 years and over often have misconceptions about the severity of asthma and their likelihood of developing the disease. A targeted asthma awareness campaign utilising social marketing techniques could benefit the health outcomes and quality of life of this population. Objective: We aimed to pilot test our survey in the older adult population and to learn more about older adult’s asthma perceptions. Methods: One-hundred and fifteen adults aged 55 years and over completed a self-report survey about their asthma knowledge, beliefs and perceptions. Results: Preliminary results reveal that the majority of older adults do not think that they are susceptible to developing asthma. In terms of perceived severity, almost all respondents answered that it was serious. On the basis of these asthma beliefs, the audience was segmented into four groups. Conclusions: Understanding older adults’ perceived susceptibility and severity allowed the segmentation of the audience according to health beliefs and perceptions about asthma. This has useful implications for message development and specific proposed health behaviours for each group.