Population health choices

We want health choices to feel like real, informed choices, not guesswork under pressure.

We examine which factors guide people’s everyday health choices and how these choices can be supported at different stages of life. We integrate perspectives and theories from both behavioural science and business studies (marketing), and we also study this as an intergenerational activity.

This work grows out of Marjorita Sormunen’s long-standing interest into social marketing — the practice of applying marketing thinking, such as audience segmentation and value creation, to advance societal rather than commercial good. In 2024, together with Heini Taiminen and Tomi Mäki-Opas, she co-authored a practical guide to social marketing for the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), aimed at people working in health and wellbeing promotion, laying out the background, principles and process of using social marketing to plan, run and evaluate initiatives for public good. Link to the practical guide.