BMSG advised the Foundation on developing a policy and media strategy for releasing, The unequal distribution of health in the Twin Cities, a study the Foundation commissioned from the Wilder Foundation.
In this project, BMSG helped local advocates learn to use mass media to educate the community and to influence policy makers.
BMSG worked with PolicyLink to advise on strategic communications for the Convergence Partnership, a collaborative effort to foster and sustain healthy environments among The California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente, Nemours, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Through this project, BMSG will act as a thought partner to The Blue Shield of California Foundation (BSCF), which has committed to storytelling as a powerful tool in their ongoing mission of improving the health of all Californians.
Through funding from The California Endowment and the Blue Shield Foundation of California, Berkeley Media Studies Group is working with the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, the Public Health Alliance of Southern California, and the San Joaquin Valley Public Health Consortium to support local health departments and their partners communicate more effectively about racial and health inequities and build their organizational capacity to advance equity in communities throughout the state.
Our objective with this project was to bring accuracy to the current debate about guns and increase the visibility of public health perspectives on handgun violence.
This study improved the accessibility and visibility of an important body of research that is playing a critical role in shaping contemporary food and beverage marketing to children and youth. With help from our partner Jeff Chester at the Center for Digital Democracy, BMSG collected, catalogued, analyzed and made available industry research reports on the effects of the techniques and approaches used in contemporary food marketing to children and youth.
In counties throughout California, community leaders are advocating for structural and policy changes to advance racial and health equity. To strengthen their ability to do so, BMSG helped build their awareness of how news coverage advances or hinders efforts to improve the social and environmental conditions that influence health.
For this project, BMSG provided media advocacy training for select grantees of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and developed tools for advocates working in California and elsewhere in the nation. Ultimately this training was intended to help improve the quality of child care, its financing and accessibility.
To help the Minnesota Statewide Health Improvement Program (SHIP) grantees and Community Health Boards (CHBs) understand how their most important issues — nutrition, physical activity and tobacco — are currently framed in the media, BMSG analyzed news coverage on these issues in distinct regions of the state. Based on the news content analyses and a skill and message assessment, BMSG provided recommendations to the Minnesota Department of Health about how it and its grantees can best frame prevention in the given news context. BMSG also delivered a series of regional trainings to SHIP grantees to help them learn more effective ways of talking about prevention. Following the trainings, BMSG reexamined news to assess whether SHIP and CHBs key messages about prevention were included in news coverage.
