With Valentine's Day behind us, trees blossoming and a little more sunshine each day, we are fast heading towards spring. As the year unfolds, so does the health media environment. The Aurora top 20 explores which health issues have made headlines and looks at the reasons behind it; we hope you enjoy the latest issue, which provides a snapshot of February's hot topics.

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February's top 20 chart saw a good moving and shaking of health topics: Whilst nutrition and obesity stayed strong in top positions, alcohol-related issues climbed seven places into third, closely followed by cancer. The chart saw two new entries; maternity services/care in fifth place and hypertension as a new category in 19th place. Four topics re-entered the chart following previous appearances. Smoking-related issues climbed up the chart to eighth position and big players heart disease and exercise were pushed to the bottom half of the chart.

Now let's delve deeper into some of February's main headlines:

Alcohol abuse/legislation. Having got through January, the month of New Year resolutions, the debate around Britain being a binge-drinking nation drowned in negative headlines after it was reported that more people than ever are dying from alcohol-related causes. Interestingly, it was claimed that intelligent people are at higher risk of experiencing alcohol problems, according to findings by the Medical Research Council. The Observer reported how the Government is eager to tackle this issue on various fronts sooner rather than later. Women in their thirties and forties are to be targeted in an anti-drinking advertising campaign featuring graphic warnings. News columns in the Independent on Sunday reported joint efforts between supermarkets, off-licences and council officials to tackle street drinking by taking strong alcoholic drinks off the shelves. However, this did not prevent Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, from accusing ministers of failing to address Britain's drinking epidemic and working too closely with the alcohol industry. The European Commission proposed stricter food-labelling rules this month to help the EU's 500 million consumers make better dietary choices, but alcoholic drinks were not included.

Smoking-related news blazed into the top ten this month following reports of initial success in the battle against smoking, the number one cause of ill-health and premature death in the UK. Newspapers referred to new figures showing that, following the smoking ban for enclosed public places last summer, nearly 165,000 people in England gave up tobacco, a 28% increase in cessation compared with the same period in 2006. The Government seems keen to clamp down on smoking further with proposals for the introduction of a £10 smoking permit, where smokers will only be sold cigarettes if in possession of a permit, and a smoking ban in outdoor children's play areas. However, not all clouds of smoke were banished as the successful tackling of smoking issues in the UK was overshadowed by international news, voiced by the World Health Organization, claiming that tobacco could kill a billion people this century unless governments act now. Furthermore, research from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Germany, reported in The Daily Mail, showed that smokers are more prone to suicide than non-smokers.

Mental health issues staged a reappearance since last making the top 20 by climbing up to seventh position. According to Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in The Guardian, Britain has become a ‘Prozac nation' with the use of antidepressants 'spiralling' out of control amid a crisis in mental health care.  Headlines were further fuelled by news that mental health issues are increasingly becoming a problem in the British workforce with as many as one-in-five experiencing conditions like depression at some point during their lives. Further headlines looked at the Government's failure to take action on the issue of mixed-sex wards, as a new report by the Mental Health Act Commission was published. Fears are growing for the well-being of women and young people with mental health issues in particular, following unsettling coverage of a number of incidents on mixed-sex wards. This seems less surprising after news in The Guardian reporting that almost two thirds of mental health wards are running at or above 100% capacity. But there is hope: According to research from the University of Warwick and Dartmouth College, the most depressing period of a person's life is middle age and from then on people's level of happiness and mental health start to increase again.

Maternity services/care. News that the NHS is facing an ever growing staff crisis continued. The Sunday Telegraph carried a warning by the King's Fund that maternity services are under added pressure due to a huge rise in births via Caesarean section caused by changing trends (rising numbers of older, obese and IVF mothers) leading to increased risks in labour. These factors have contributed to a doubling in Caesarean rates over the past 15 years, with one-in-four births now occurring on the operating table. Furthermore, The Times reported a soaring demand for maternity services by immigrants, with estimated costs of £350 million a year. While the number of babies born to British mothers has fallen by 44,000 a year since the mid-nineties, the figure for babies born to foreign mothers has risen by 64,000 in the same period, according to a report by the BBC's Ten O'Clock News. This 77% increase has pushed the overall birthrate to its highest level for 26 years. Maternity services became a political battleground with the editor of The British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, quoted in a number of articles, stating that the Government massively underestimated the scale of increasing demand on maternity services. The Observer reported that a Conservative government would aim to provide a dedicated maternity nurse at home for the first full week after birth. Meanwhile, Health Secretary Alan Johnson proposed to ease the staffing crisis by paying retired midwives to return to the NHS.

And finally, a study during the 2006 World Cup in Germany, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, discovered that men were three times more likely to have a heart attack or other coronary event on the days when the host nation was playing. The researchers found that the intensity of a game, such as penalty shoot-outs, rather than the outcome, is a key factor.

As an agency with a number of avid football lovers, Aurora was interested to read this news. At least the findings mean that fans in Britain may be healthier as a result of the home nations not qualifying for the Euro 2008!

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Aurora strives to apply quantitative, qualitative and emotional understanding of health issues to client communication programmes. Dove-tailing informed PR activity with the media's appetite enables us to assist clients with communicating their vision.

To find out more, contact Neil Crump or Claire Eldridge on 020 7424 7940. 

The top 20 chart provides our interpretative snap-shot of health stories in the national press and is based upon a quantitative process. Analysis based on news from the 26 January to 25 February 2008.