This chapter was written to help public health advocates think strategically about working with the news media. This means switching from thinking about using mass media solely as a tool for getting information to health consumers to thinking about the news media as a mechanism for informing citizens and pressuring decision makers.
The proliferation of media in children’s lives has created a new “marketing and media ecosystem” that encompasses mobile devices, social networks, instant messaging, video games, and virtual, three-dimensional worlds. This report examines how these new marketing practices are fundamentally transforming how food and beverage companies do business with young people in the 21st century.
This Web site exposes the immersive and often insidious practices food and beverage companies use to market their products to children and youth online, using everything from Web sites to mobile phones. The foods and beverages being marketed are, by and large, among those that health experts, including the Institute of Medicine, have said children should avoid. Visit the site to learn more about digital marketing, read reports from experts on the subject, and keep up-to-date on the latest ad campaigns.
When a food or beverage company does something that might be good for health, should public health groups congratulate them publicly? If not, why not? When companies’ words don’t match their deeds, the answers are not always clear. This framing brief describes how food and beverage companies are reacting to pressure from public health groups and explores implications for framing public health’s responses to those actions.
This appendix to “Navigating the Trade Press: What are the Food and Beverage Industries Discussing?” contains a wealth of sources to help map public and industry conversations on nutrition and activity.
Our public conversation about food and beverage policy is influenced by many sources, including industry stakeholders. But public health advocates are often at a disadvantage when facing corporate heavyweights simply because they are not privy to the same information. To help give advocates working to prevent obesity an understanding of food and advertising literature, we mapped the food, beverage, and advertising trade press, a rich source of information on the industries that, to a large degree, determines what Americans eat. [download appendix]
Nutrition is often described primarily as a matter of individual responsibility, which results in a focus on limited strategies that are unlikely to be successful. Public health advocates need to change the terms of debate or “reframe” the issue so that the context around individuals — the social, economic, and political context — comes into view. This paper uses obesity as an example of the need for reframing in nutrition and offers suggestions on reframing based on lessons learned from other public health issues.
This report by Jeff Chester from the Center for Digital Democracy and Kathryn Montgomery from American University describes new marketing practices that are fundamentally transforming how food and beverage companies do business with young people in the twenty-first century. See additional examples, news coverage, and statements from Marion Nestle, Kelly Brownell, the Strategic Alliance, Senator Tom Harkin, and Congressman Edward J. Markey at digitalads.org. View the full report.
This is the story of how a group of dedicated but frustrated affordable housing advocates learned to tell their story so it reflected their values and the values that resonated with policy makers. What they thought would be a simple refresher course in working with the media transformed their own understanding of affordable housing, how to talk about it, and, ultimately, what was done about it.
Obesity has become the popular term for a set of problems that result in premature death and injury from diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. It is a convenient term, but we should stop using it. This framing brief explains why.
