Funder:
The California
Endowment
The California Endowment created the HEAC Initiative to foster
healthy eating and activity environments for California's children. HEAC
sites in Baldwin Park, Chula Vista, Los Angeles, Oakland, Santa Ana, and
Shasta county focus their efforts on six sectors: schools, after-school,
neighborhoods, health care settings, and marketing and advertising. BMSG
is working with the sites to address the marketing and advertising
sector, and to provide media advocacy training and strategic
consultation as the sites pursue policy change in each of the
sectors.
Addressing Food and Beverage Marketing that Targets Kids
Communities confronting obesity are frustrated by the corporate
marketing practices that make unhealthy foods and beverages attractive,
easily available and readily affordable in our communities. Because
pervasive mass media advertising campaigns are created by multinational
corporations and regulated by the federal government, many local
advocates feel powerless to do anything about this issue.
However, what many people don't realize is that food and beverage
corporations' marketing practices go far beyond TV advertising — and
there are many things local communities can do to limit the reach of
corporate marketing. BMSG is guiding grantees in the HEAC Initiative in
how to confront these marketing practices through local policy change so
they can transform the marketing environment that contributes to
persistent and savage disparities in health.
To do this, BMSG
developed a toolkit for HEAC sites on fighting junk food marketing to
kids at the local level. Our toolkit answers the questions:
How are food and beverage companies marketing their unhealthy
products to young people? What are their target marketing
strategies? How can neighbors, parents, teachers, and young
people themselves confront marketing that interferes with creating
healthy eating environments in their neighborhoods?
The BMSG toolkit provides examples and stories of what local
communities can do about unhealthy marketing practices, so people can
take action to reduce unwanted marketing and promotion. The toolkit
contains everything you need to begin a discussion and take action in
your community. [ download pdf ]
Paquete de herramientas "Luchemos Contra la
Promoción de Alimentos Chatarra entre los Niños" esta
disponible en Español
[transferir paquete de herramientas en Español pdf
]
Click the link below to watch streaming video
in English or Spanish that vividly illustrates the problem and what
local groups can do about it.
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Media Advocacy
Training
BMSG's first set of trainings for HEAC sites focuses
on using the food and beverage marketing toolkit. The goal of the
training is to help HEAC groups make concrete decisions about where to
focus their efforts in the marketing sector, and begin to plan for how
to mobilize the community on this issue.
In the later years of the HEAC Initiative, BMSG's trainings will
focus on how to use media advocacy to advance specific policy goals the
sites have identified for each sector.
Strategic Consultation
BMSG provides strategic
consultation on media advocacy to HEAC sites, and, through the Strategic
Alliance's Rapid Response Media Network to other advocates in California
working to improve food and activity environments.
Framing Briefs
BMSG provides general support for framing
food and activity issues from a public health perspective to HEAC sites,
and through the Strategic Alliance's Rapid Response Media Network to
other advocates in California working to improve food and activity
environments.
Food Marketers Greenwash Junk Food:
Companies Tout Link to Health and Environmental Movements. This
Framing Brief explains how food and beverage companies are borrowing the
symbolism of the environmental movement to cast a favorable
"green" light on themselves and their products. But many of
the products they label green are still high in fat, salt and calories,
and whether they are eco-friendly is open to debate. [ download pdf ]
Reading between the Lines:
Understanding Food Industry Responses to Concerns about Nutrition.
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? What do these promises mean? 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 the implications for framing public
health's responses to those actions. [ download pdf ]
The
Problem with Obesity. 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. [ download pdf ]
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