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Advertisements often use fear appeals to encourage prevention focused behaviors. This approach has been somewhat successful in changing attitudes and behaviors, often encouraging consumers to secede from behaviors such as smoking or to adopt preventative behaviors such as engaging in health screenings. However, health-care marketers have been less successful in efforts to reduce obesity. The obesity crisis has led to an abundance of marketing communications designed to influence weight loss. Many of these focus on fear of physical health risks associated with being overweight which have a certain degree of uncertainty surrounding them. This study aims to examine financial threats that have lower perceptions of uncertainty, and the differential impact this type of threat has on elements of the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM).

A 2 × 2 experimental design is used to examine the differential impact of messages communicating threat of financial and physical risk on evoked fear, perceived uncertainty, perceived susceptibility, efficacy and intention to lose weight.

Overall results indicate that response to weight loss advertising varies given the type of threat presented. Results indicate that there is a greater level of uncertainty associated with physical health threats than that with financial threats. Moreover, even though individuals were more fearful of and felt more susceptible to physical threats, when they believed that the recommended behavior was feasible, financial threat was more influential.

To encourage weight loss and intentions to lose weight advertising in practice and advertising research primarily focus on the physical health risks associated with being overweight as a motivating factor. Current research explores the impact of financial threats on attitudes and behavioral intention and finds that financial threats are perceived as more certain than physical threats, and the communication of financial threats is more salient in its effect on weight loss intentions. An opportunity for future research is to further explore the impact of uncertainty in relation to components of EPPM and how threats varying in degrees of uncertainty may impact weight loss intentions.

In the previous chapter, the reader will have become familiar with the idea of screening for traumatic experiences within organisations as a way to identify those who may benefit most from interventions and support. In this chapter, I present an overview of the trauma therapy literature in the first instance and then explore some of the debates regarding specific trauma-informed treatments versus general therapeutic approaches. The multicultural competency literature is discussed, and the multicultural orientation approach of cultural humility, cultural opportunity and cultural comfort is highlighted in a practice context. This chapter concludes with a case study vignette that brings it all together with a clinical example of what trauma-informed therapy through a multicultural lens might look like. As such I operationalise choice, collaboration , trust and transparency, and cultural principles from the trauma-informed care literature. Although applied here to specific trauma-informed organisations, some of the methods and processes that I unpack can be used in non-specific organisations where social/case managers are employed and wish to operationalise choice and collaboration in a structured way.