To help the CDC’s Communities Putting Prevention to Work Initiative in its goals to prevent/delay chronic disease and provide positive, sustainable health change in communities, BMSG provided trainings and webinars, individualized technical assistance, tools and products to fill gaps in existing literature, individual community consultation on messaging, and spokesperson training.
In 2014, more people died of opioid overdose than any other year on record, and the epidemic is only getting worse. In rural communities in Northern California, the abuse of prescription drugs is particularly severe. Key to addressing and preventing the spread of this epidemic is understanding the news coverage of the issue. The California Department of Public Health commissioned BMSG to monitor and analyze print and online news from Northern California about the growing use of opioids.
In 1997, “The Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media: Health Care’s Invisible Partner” documented the underrepresentation of nurses’ voices in media coverage of health issues. Twenty years later, are nurses better represented in health news?
In May 2001, the Labor Project for Working Families sought help for what was anticipated to be a long and arduous campaign to establish paid family leave in California. BMSG helped the organization develop a trained cadre of advocates around the state who would be able to speak effectively to journalists and at public hearings.
With support from the National Cancer Institute, the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern Law School collaborated with BMSG to conduct a sweeping review of arguments over who is responsible for causing, and remedying, two of the most serious public health crises in recent history: tobacco and obesity.
With our colleagues Jeff Chester at the Center for Digital Democracy, Kathryn Montgomery and Sonya Grier, both at American University, we examined how new digital marketing practices are fundamentally transforming how food and beverage companies do business with young people in the 21st century.
In 1997, as part of a major initiative on children’s health, The California Endowment contracted with BMSG to compile a series of publications on how various children’s health issues are covered in the news media, and to use the findings in media advocacy trainings for children’s health advocates in California.
BMSG worked closely with the Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments to use media advocacy to accelerate the coalition’s efforts to shift debate on nutrition and physical activity away from a primary focus on individual choice to one that includes corporate and government practices and the role of the environment in shaping eating and activity behaviors.
BMSG worked with the California WIC Association to help breastfeeding advocates be sure that news coverage of the subject would include the importance of reducing the social and cultural barriers that make it difficult or undesirable for women to breastfeed.
BMSG worked with the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning to build a cadre of skilled media advocates who elevated the issue with local and national media around the country.
