Questions about our work? Struggling with a framing challenge? Want to know
more? Talk to us!

Framing Resources for Advocates

Obesity Crisis or Soda Scapegoat? The Debate Over Selling Soda in Schools

By Elena O. Lingas and Lori Dorfman, Issue 15
In 1999 a Venice High School student asked a simple question: can the school sell 100% fruit juice in its vending machines? "No," said the school -- "our soda contract forbids it." The ensuing battle led the Los Angeles School Board to ban the sale of soda on its campuses, just as the Oakland Unified School District had done a year earlier. In Issue 15 we dissect the debate in news coverage of the soda sales bans and find that by acknowledging the complexity of the obesity crises, supporters of the soda sales bans may be undermining their own arguments. BMSG evaluated how recent debates on banning sodas in schools were framed in the news coverage of the contests in the Oakland and Los Angeles Unified School Districts. How did proponents and opponents make their case? What statistics, metaphors, and values did they use? The findings will help advocates understand where they sit on the continuum of debate and help them anticipate their opposition's arguments. [Issue15.pdf]

Debates from Four States Over Selling Soda in Schools

By Lori Dorfman, Eliana Bukofzer, and Elena O. Lingas, Issue 17
In 2006, Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Maryland, introduced legislation that included restrictions on the sales of sodas in schools. That same year, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation brokered a deal among soda companies to restrict soda sales in schools. We wanted to know: how were the arguments for and against restricting access to soda and junk food being portrayed in news and in testimony before lawmakers? Who was making the arguments, and what were they saying? [Issue17.pdf]

American Values and the News about Children's Health

By Regina Lawrence, Issue 12
The term "values" often acts as political shorthand, usually for the political agenda of social conservatives. Yet values systems are crucial to any political culture. How competing American value systems of individualism and what we call interconnection are represented in news stories will influence readers' interpretations of the stories. The news about children's health provided us a particularly useful lens for analyzing American values in the news since, these days, both conservative and progressive voices are claiming to "leave no child behind." [Issue12.pdf]

Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of Childhood Nutrition Policy Issues

By Katie Woodruff and Lori Dorfman, Issue 10
Childhood obesity is on the rise, reaching epidemic proportions. Public health advocates have many mechanisms to arrest this trend, but are they getting the attention of policy makers through the news? Woodruff and Dorfman analyze two years of news coverage on childhood nutrition issues in California's major newspapers. [Issue10.pdf]

Extracting Lessons from Public Health Battlegrounds

Public health advocates working on tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and traffic safety struggled for years before understanding that individual approaches alone won't suffice and that environmental (or policy) approaches to prevention had to be part of the mix. This analysis applies those lessons to preventing obesity. BMSG wrote this report after convening two small working meetings, bringing together researchers and advocates from tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and traffic safety to identify the key “moments” in research on those various public health issues and how the research was used successfully by advocates in contentious and controversial policy debates. The meetings uncovered the scars and practical experience from specific policy battles to help public health funders and practitioners identify what could be facilitated now so that the process happens faster for preventing obesity. The final report catalogues lessons from tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and traffic safety so that public health funders, researchers, and practitioners might assess them, adapt them, and apply them to preventing and reducing obesity. [download pdf]

Framing Prevention in California: Lessons from Past Efforts to Raise Revenues

When it comes to prevention, the question isn't what works, the question is: how can we pay for what we know will create healthy environments? With Prevention Institute, BMSG examined whether past efforts to raise revenues in the realms of alcohol, tobacco, and lead paint might hold promise in the realm of food and activity. This report presents six case studies of those efforts and an analysis of news coverage of three California attempts to raise taxes or attach a fee to junk food or soda. [download pdf]

Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age

The Proliferation of the media in children's lives has created a new "marketing ecosystem" that encompasses cell phones, mobile music devices, instant messaging, videogames, and virtual three-dimensional worlds. 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. [download 8 page brief pdf] [download 98 page full report pdf] [see examples, news coverage, and statements from Marion Nestle, Kelly Brownell, the Strategic Alliance, Senator Tom Harkin, and Congressman Edward J. Markey, and the latest reports at [digitalads.org]

Nutrition content of food and beverage products on Web sites popular with children

By Elena O. Lingas, Lori Dorfman and Eliana Bukofzer
American Journal of Public Health, 2009;99:S587-S592. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2008.152918. Published online ahead of print on May 14, 2009. Download from http://www.ajph.org

Food and beverage industry marketing practices aimed at children: Developing strategies for preventing diabetes and obesity

By S. Samuels, L. Craypo, Lori Dorfman, M. Purciel and M. Standish
A report on the proceeding sponsored by The California Endowment. Bmsg.org, November 2003. Download PDF

The Case for Reframing Obesity

By Lori Dorfman, Lawrence Wallack
Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 39:S45-S50, 2007. Download PDF

Questions about our work? Struggling with a framing challenge? Want to know
more? Talk to us!