Berkeley Media Studies Group provided media advocacy support between December 2015 and January 2016 for the Urban Peace Movement (UPM), an organization dedicated to a model of youth development known as “Healing Centered Youth Organizing,” through which young people have the opportunity to heal from the negative effects of social trauma and community disinvestment by becoming engaged as agents of social change.
Like other public health issues, violence is preventable, but, in numerous cities, policies that emphasize prevention are in short supply. That’s because many citizens and leaders don’t believe preventing violence is possible, and even if they want to try, they don’t know how. This is partly because the public’s understanding of violence, beyond personal experience, comes through the filter of what gets reported in news coverage.
For 10 years, we helped consult and coach members of numerous community organizations funded to do grassroots violence prevention projects, the youth served by those organizations, violence prevention researchers, academic fellows, community fellows and state policy advocates.
Traffic fatalities and injuries are preventable, but does the public see them that way? Vision Zero San Francisco is a collaborative campaign working across sectors to build momentum for a shift toward safe, healthy, equitable mobility for everyone who uses San Francisco’s streets. To help the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency in its goal to improve traffic safety, Berkeley Media Studies Group examined public discourse on the issue and identified framing challenges and opportunities.
Created as part of a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Heart Association, the Voices for Healthy Kids initiative works to improve the aspects of children’s food and physical activity environments make it hard for kids to eat well and be active. Berkeley Media Studies Group led one of six teams to help the initiative achieve its vision.
Are Black women 55 and older — who can draw on their experience in the civil rights movement and decades of policy advocacy — visible in a key part of our nation’s public discourse: television news?
Degree-granting programs in public health generally do not provide systematic training in advocacy. In recognition of this curricular gap, BMSG worked with professor Susan Sorenson and dean Lawrence Wallack to develop a curriculum and resource guide that public health programs could adapt to teach social advocacy.
