Abstract
The Act-Belong-Commit campaign is an evidence-based social marketing program making extensive use of social franchising to promote the mental health and wellbeing of individuals and communities. The campaign targets individuals with respect to engaging in activities that strengthen and maintain good mental health. At the same time, the campaign targets organisations that offer mentally healthy activities to act as social franchises for the campaign, promoting the messages internally to their staff and/or externally to their clients or local communities. Act-Belong-Commit’s overarching framework allows for implementation at the population level, as well as in specific settings and for targeted groups. The campaign has a mass and targeted media presence and is implemented through partnerships with local governments, schools, workplaces, health services, state government departments, community organizations, and local sporting and recreational clubs.
This chapter describes the campaign, how it operates in the community, how it is evolving from a largely population wide (universal) approach to include targeted (selective) approaches, its geographic diffusion, and evaluation.
For information on how an organisation can become involved with the Act-Belong-Commit campaign, contact the first author (r.donovan@curtin.edu.au) or the campaign manager Amberlee Laws (a.laws@curtin.edu.au). For more information on the campaign, visit www.actbelongcommit.org.au
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Annor, S., & Allen, P. (2008). Why is it difficult to promote public mental health? A study of policy implementation at local level. Journal of Public Mental Health, 7(4), 17–29.
Anwar McHenry, J., & Donovan, R. J. (2013). The development of the Perth charter for the promotion of mental health and wellbeing. International Journal of Mental Health Promotion. doi:10.1080/14623730.2013.810402.
Anwar McHenry, J., Donovan, R. J., Jalleh, G., & Laws, A. (2012). Impact evaluation of the Act-Belong-Commit mental health promotion campaign. Journal of Public Mental Health, 11(4), 186–195.
Barnett, L., & Kendall, E. (2011). Culturally appropriate methods for enhancing the participation of Aboriginal Australians in health-promoting programs. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 22, 27–32.
Barry, M. M., Domitrovich, C., & Lara, M. A. (2005). The implementation of mental health promotion programmes. IUHPE: Promotion and Education (Suppl 2), 30–35.
Beckmann, M., & Zeyen, A. (2014). Franchising as a strategy for combining small and large group advantages (logics) in social entrepreneurship: A Hayekian perspective. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 43, 502–522 (online).
Department of Health. (2012). No health without mental health. Mental health strategy implementation framework. London: Centre for Mental Health, Department of Health, Mind, NHS Confederation Mental Health Network, Rethink Mental Illness, Turning Point.
Donovan, R. J., & Anwar McHenry, J. (2014). Act-Belong-Commit: Lifestyle medicine for keeping mentally healthy. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 8(1), 33–42.
Donovan, R. J., Watson, N., Henley, N., Williams, A., Silburn, S., Zubrick, S., James, R., Cross, D., Hamilton, G., & Roberts, C. (2003). Mental health promotion scoping project. Report to Healthway. Perth: Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer Control, Curtin University.
Donovan, R. J., James, R., Jalleh, G., & Sidebottom, C. (2006). Implementing mental health promotion: The Act-Belong-Commit mentally healthy WA campaign in Western Australia. International Journal of Mental Health Promotion, 8(1), 33–42.
Donovan, R. J., Henley, N., Jalleh, G., Silburn, S. R., Zubrick, S. R., & Williams, A. (2007a). People’s beliefs about factors contributing to mental health: Implications for mental health promotion. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 18(1), 50–56.
Donovan, R. J., James, R., & Jalleh, G. (2007b). Community-based social marketing to promote positive mental health: The Act-Belong-Commit campaign in rural Western Australia. In G. Hastings (Ed.), Social marketing: Why should the devil have all the best tunes? (pp. 336–343). London: Butterworth Heinemann.
Friedli, L. (2009). Mental health, resilience and inequalities. Copenhagen: World Health Organisation.
Herrman, H., Saxena, S., & Moodie, R. (Eds.). (2005). Promoting mental health: Concepts, emerging evidence, practice. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Jalleh, G., Donovan, R. J., James, R., & Ambridge, J. (2007). Process evaluation of the Act-Belong-Commit mentally health WA campaign: First 12 months data. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 18(3), 217–220.
Jalleh, G., Anwar McHenry, J., Donovan, R., & Laws, A. (2013). Impact on community organisations that partnered with the Act-Belong-Commit mental health promotion campaign. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 24(1), 44–48.
Joiner, T. E. (2005). Why people die by suicide. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Keyes, C. L. M. (2007). Promoting and protecting mental health as flourishing: A complementary strategy for improving national mental health. American Psychologist, 62(2), 95–108.
Montagu, D. (2002). Franchising of health services in low-income countries. Health Policy and Planning, 17(2), 121–130.
O’Hara, B. J., Bauman, A. E., King, E. L., & Phongsavan, P. (2011). Process evaluation of the advertising campaign for the NSW Get Healthy Information and Coaching Service®. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 22, 68–71.
Patterson, A. (2009). Building the foundations for mental health and wellbeing: Review of Australian and international mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention policy. Hobart: Department of Health and Human Services.
Quinn, N., & Biggs, H. (2010). Creating partnerships to improve community mental health and well-being in an area of high deprivation: Lessons from a study with high-rise flat residents in east Glasgow. Journal of Public Mental Health, 9(4), 16–21.
Richardson, K., & Turnbull, G. (2008). Opposites attract: How social franchising can speed up the growth of social enterprise. Surrey: INSPIRE Development Partnership.
Sandel, M. J. (2012). What money can’t buy: The moral limits of markets. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Saxena, S., & Garrison, P. J. (2004). Mental health promotion: Case studies from countries. Geneva: World Health Organisation and World Federation for Mental Health.
Takenaka, K., Bao, H., Shimazaki, T., Lee, Y. H., & Konuma, K. (2012) Mental health promotion contributing to resilience for children after Tsunami disaster in Japan. Poster Presentation. In The seventh world conference on the promotion of mental health and the prevention of mental and behavioural disorders. Perth, pp. 5–6. http://www.papersearch.net/view/detail.asp?detail_key=20212446
Volvery, T., & Hackl, V. (2010). The promise of social franchising as a model to achieve social goals. In A. Fayolle & H. Matley (Eds.), Handbook of research on social entrepreneurship. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
WHO. (1986). Ottawa charter for health promotion. Geneva: WHO.
Acknowledgements
The Mentally Healthy WA Act-Belong-Commit Campaign is funded by Healthway (the Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation) and the Mental Health Commission of Western Australia, and supported by WA Country Health Services, several Local Governments, and Curtin University.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Donovan, R.J., Anwar-McHenry, J. (2015). Promoting Mental Health and Wellbeing in Individuals and Communities: The ‘Act-Belong-Commit’ Campaign. In: Wymer, W. (eds) Innovations in Social Marketing and Public Health Communication. Applying Quality of Life Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19869-9_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19869-9_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-19868-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-19869-9
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)