November 2012 - Indian Airforce

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Gp Capt Narinder Taneja Billion Hearts Beating is an example of a successful professionally designed preventive health campaign against heart disease in our country. I use it as a template to demonstrate that if we have to succeed in preventive efforts- health or flight safety, we need to engage in professionally designed, sustained and focused campaigns to achieve the desired objectives. Have you heard about ‘Billion Hearts Beating’ and taken the pledge? Some of you would have done that. For those who have not heard about it let me describe what the ‘Billion Hearts Beating’ is. The vision of ‘Billion Hearts Beating’ is a long-term sustained movement towards a heart-healthy India and the mission is to actively promote heart health across the country by creating awareness about heart disease and providing workable solutions to help overcome it. At the time of writing this article 353815 people had taken the pledge. The slogan is extremely catchy; the website is equally attractive and well designed. What about focus on prevention of any similar disease in the IAF. Sadly, none. We have generic advisories on obesity and lifestyle diseases. But neither do we have a sustained, focused, or professionally designed and driven campaign, nor do we have measures to assess the outcomes. It is important that we identify the disease that is most prevalent among our serving personnel and their families (let us say it is hypertension). It is a concern because it affects our personnel, their families, affects longevity, quality of life and places a yet uncalculated financial burden on healthcare services. We need to focus our effort towards combating this disease problem. Let us now consider Flight Safety. We have interesting slogans on each page of the Flight Safety calendar. There are even more interesting slogans and themes in the Flight Safety magazine. Yet if we were to ask anyone how they identify with Flight Safety issues, we may not get a concrete reply. This probably is due to lack of a focussed, sustained and professionally run campaign. What could be the issues in Flight Safety that could benefit from campaigns such as ‘Billion Hearts Beating?’ FOD, human error servicing, 22 Aerospace Safety N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 2 INDIAN AIR FORCE
human error aircrew and bird hits prevention are some issues that would benefit from campaigns like that being talked about. We need a focus that is apparent, all pervasive across the organisation and sustained for a tangible period of time. You may at this stage be wondering what a ‘Billion Hearts Beating’ campaign has got to do with flight safety and how there are beating hearts in the IAF. You are right to some extent but there are deeper and complex implications of the ‘Billion Hearts Beating’ campaign that I want to put into the perspective of good health and flight safety. The whole aim of a preventive program in the form of a campaign is to overwhelm the target clientele in a way that he/she literally cannot avoid the print or electronic message looking at him/her wherever he/she is. This should be done to the extent that if he/she opens his/her AFNET computer, that should be the first message for him/her e.g. a Flight Safety or health message. In my view, for a campaign to be effective and successful, it should be:- Relevant to the clientele and be genuine. Topical. Practical and easily understood. Such that people can identify with it. It must have a face to it. How Could We Run a Successful Campaign for Flight Safety? Media. The Air Force has a wide array of media which it can utilise effectively for mass reach in any program. Print, web, cable TV, offices and housing areas, shopping complexes, display electronic boards, you name a medium and we possibly have it. When the campaign focusses on the role each support personnel can play in enhancing Flight Safety e.g. timely PORs, on time sick report and availability of medicines, quick and user friendly issue of clothing, it will appeal to each individual and give him ownership in the cause of flight safety. Brand Ambassadors. Products in the market employ brand ambassadors-luminaries/ famous personalities from different walks of life to endorse their product. Our own experiences tell us how effective it is to utilise brand ambassadors especially for public outreach programs e.g. Amitabh Bacchan for polio eradication campaign. It may not be out of place to have a brand ambassador for our campaign e.g. how do villagers / small shop keepers in and around an Air Force base understand the importance of bird hits and the significance of cleanliness around the airport? By either using a personality to endorse such a message or using an ‘aam aadmi’ with whom they can identify themselves. Do we need a professional agency to run a campaign for us? Be it Flight Safety or preventive health, I for one feel, Yes! There are professionals in this field who have core expertise in developing such programs and we need to utilise their expertise in designing and executing such projects. This article is an attempt to make us think again as to how we can run programs to achieve certain objectives, in particular, related to Flight Safety and/ preventive health. The need of the hour is to put in place professionally designed, driven and executed campaigns that are focussed and relevant to the target population. Only then will we be able to achieve tangible results in these key areas. - Gp Capt Narinder Taneja INDIAN AIR FORCE 2 0 1 2 N o v e m b e r Aerospace Safety 23
Page 1 and 2: AEROSP CE Safety FOCUS: AIR TRAFFIC
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Page 5 and 6: Expecting the ac to report finals a
Page 7 and 8: species posing the greatest risk to
Page 9 and 10: Number of Reported Strikes. Knowing
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Page 13 and 14: and I forgot to off centre. Now I w
Page 15 and 16: airborne six minutes later as plann
Page 17 and 18: The time was 2100h and I had just f
Page 19 and 20: Continued from page 13 maintaining
Page 21 and 22: CROSSWORD CLUES (ACROSS) 1. Pilots
Page 23: search for the missing thing. We do
Page 27 and 28: I am not an external member of an a
Page 29 and 30: A MIG 21 aircraft was cleared for G
Page 31 and 32: There was a hushed silence in the b
Page 33 and 34: had guns which were in poor conditi
Page 35 and 36: 797614-F Cpl Shantanu Chandra Inst/
Page 37 and 38: On 02 Mar 12 , 766345 H JWO T Prata
Page 40: REPORT UNSAFE ACTS USE ONLINE TOOLS

November 2012 - Indian Airforce

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