Childhood overweight and physical inactivity have reached epidemic levels in the United States, and they are taking a terrible toll on health. This memo explores the prevalence of the problem, its causes and implications, and some of the issues that are blocking the development of a strong consumer-based movement aimed at prevention.
Understanding the shift in tobacco control from primarily behavioral approaches toward policy approaches can provide insight into a winning strategy that can be applied to obesity prevention.
This appendix to the preliminary report outlines the components of an infrastructure to support policy advocacy to prevent and reduce obesity: policy advocacy support, bridging, and media advocacy. It also describes 20 research questions for accelerating progress on obesity.
We wrote this handbook to help the national child care community communicate effectively with journalists and others. The guide summarizes public opinion and media research on child care and provides a menu of tested messages for advocates. It is modeled after a similar document created in the 1980s by the Advocacy Institute to assist tobacco-control advocates. The appendix contains a report from Ethel Klein, who conducted the public opinion research BMSG commissioned for the message guide.
This appendix to Making the Case for Early Care and Education: A Message Development Guide for Advocates contains a report from Ethel Klein of EDK Associates in New York, who conducted the public opinion research BMSG commissioned for the message guide.
In this article, published in the American Journal of Health Behavior, BMSG Director Lori Dorfman discusses how analyzing the news can help advocates find ways to garner media coverage for their issue and advance policy. Findings from BMSG’s research on how two public health issues have been portrayed in the news suggest ways that advocates can make themselves — and data — more readily available to reporters. The research also underscores how journalists can improve their reporting by expanding their list of sources, including more context in their work, and asking better questions based on epidemiology.
On September 24, 2002, California made history as the first state in the nation to enact paid family leave. Issue 14 shows how the battle for paid family leave was framed by opponents and proponents in California and national news coverage. It also provides insights for both advocates and journalists as paid family leave moves into implementation in California and onto the public agenda in other states across the nation.
Public health professionals working to prevent childhood obesity want to know the best avenues of addressing food and beverage marketing aimed at children. This report looks at the relationship between the way foods and beverages are marketed to children and the rising trends in childhood overweight and explores strategies that might engage the food and beverage industry in reducing the marketing of unhealthy foods to children.
This report offers a media advocacy plan to counter the aggressive marketing by the tobacco industry at family sporting events. It aims to shift the focus from current arguments that frame tobacco marketing as a children’s issue back to an issue of irresponsible industry marketing.
Battered women’s advocates and feminist scholars have long complained about how intimate partner violence appears in the news. But because the evidence has been anecdotal, the extent that U.S. news media downplay violence against women has been difficult to gauge. Do most news stories blame the victim? Do they mitigate the perpetrator? Overall, how is intimate partner violence depicted in newspapers? We decided to find out by examining a year’s worth of articles in two major newspapers.
