Notable contributions
Bishop has led several medical initiatives in Australia. The following subsections outline two campaigns that have helped change social attitudes towards cancer,in both financial and health terms.
Dark Side of Tanning Campaign
“The ‘Dark Side of Tanning’(DSOT) mass media campaign was developed in 2007 to influence attitudes related to tanning”. [5] Dr Bishop was involved in its creation through his role at the Cancer Institute NSW. The messages of the campaign were distributed using many forms of media such as billboard advertising. [6]
Amongst 15- to 29-year-olds in Australia,melanoma is the most common type of cancer. Further,"in 2008,there were 3,591 new cases of melanoma in NSW (2,127 in males and 1,464 in females) accounting for 10 per cent of all cancers". [6] In the paper,“Exposure to the ‘Dark Side of Tanning’skin cancer prevention mass media campaign and its association with tanning attitudes in New South Wales,Australia”,it was highlighted that there was a misunderstanding about the side-effects of tanning,mainly misconceptions about the association of a tan with a healthy lifestyle outweighed the health concerns.
The campaign was first aired in the summer of 2007/2008 and was run during the same seasonal period until the summer of 2010/2011. It “centred on three television commercials (referred to as ‘Girl’,‘Footy’and ‘Surfer’,respectively) featuring a range of ‘tanner moments’—scenes that aimed to build personal relevance by featuring actors from the target audience”. [5] Moreover,the state governments of Victoria,Queensland,South Australia and Western Australia obtained the licensing rights to use the campaign. [7]
Awards
- 2010:earned an international Sulzberger Institute sun safety award at the sixty-eighth annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology. [6]
- 2010:presented with a Gold Australian Advertising Effectiveness (Effie) award in the Government,Corporate and Social Services category. [6]
Quit campaigns
These marketing campaigns formed part of the NSW Tobacco Action Plan 2005-09 which “set a target of 1 percent reduction per annum in adult smoking prevalence between 2005 and 2009”. [8] This was to be achieved by changing individuals’smoking habits by “invoking cognitive or emotional responses” [9] through various media publications. These messages formed a vital part of controlling tobacco consumption.
The first media release by the Cancer Institute NSW was on the 18th of April 2006 and was centered around promoting the services offered by the Quitline.
Dr Bishop had this to say when commenting on the cost of smoking in the New South Wales community and how the quit campaigns can alleviate some of the issues:
“We think Quit campaigns are very effective. Collins and Lapsley have done an economic review of the effects of smoking which shows that about $6.6 billion a year is spent in New South Wales on smoking-related illness and people dying early—all of the economic effects. We have estimated that as smoking rates drop by 1% a year over a five-year period the economic return to New South Wales would be between $2.3 billion and $5.8 billion. So the money we spend to drop the smoking rate by 1 per cent,which is essentially what we have achieved over the last year,is very effective in terms of health economics”. [10]
