In this guide, developed by BMSG in partnership with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we review best practices in framing sexual violence to inform the public about preventing sexual assault. We also highlight ways to communicate with the media, which play an important role in educating the public.
In Del Norte County and Tribal Lands, early literacy is more than a local educational effort. It is a major community-wide cause aimed at improving life outcomes and health. This case study explores how residents, educators, and business leaders are using strategic partnerships, data, and empathy to increase school readiness and to support children’s and families’ well-being.
All children deserve the opportunity to be healthy and thrive, but an all-too-common marketing practice in which food and beverage companies target kids of color with ads for junk food and soda is compromising the health of young African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. In this presentation, we outline the current landscape of junk food and sugary drink targeted marketing, and we share concrete actions that kids, parents, advocates, researchers, and policymakers can take to help hold industry accountable. This PowerPoint slide deck, developed by Berkeley Media Studies Group with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is available for free download, and we encourage advocates and others to adapt and use the presentation to help raise the visibility of targeted marketing as a health equity issue.
Helping people understand that sexual violence can be prevented is a critical step toward a future where abuse and assault are rare. And to make the case for prevention, we need to go beyond the scope of the problem and articulate what to do about it. This messaging guide, developed in collaboration with RALIANCE, a national partnership dedicated to ending sexual violence in one generation, provides concrete guidance for advocates to build effective messages that highlight the need for prevention.
Early childhood is a critical developmental period because what happens during this time affects health outcomes into and throughout adulthood. How, then, can journalists incorporate complex findings from multiple bodies of science into their reporting to tell a more complete story about early childhood? In this report, we offer recommendations based on a national news analysis and conversations with veteran reporters whose own work on this subject is exemplary.
In 2010, the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) brought a stronger focus on equity to federal policies governing school nutrition. The new policy increased low-income students’ access to free- and reduced-price school meals and simplified administrative processes in districts with high proportions of eligible children. But were these details making it into news coverage? We conducted two related studies to find out how the policy appeared in news coverage and to what extent equity-based arguments were present.
Residents and advocates in Richmond and Contra Costa County know that to create strong, healthy communities, they have to change misconceptions about formerly incarcerated residents and create a greater public understanding about the need for changes to the criminal justice system. This case study explores how a collaboration of city residents, local and county law enforcement, elected officials, community workers, and, most importantly, formerly incarcerated residents have done just that by creating a nationally recognized reentry network — one that owes much of its success to the power of storytelling.
This case study tells the story of how advocates in Kern County, California, succeeded in creating a healthier school climate for students after learning that the local school district was suspending and expelling students of color at much higher rates than white students. Read on to learn how they used a combination of tactics, including community organizing, strategic communication, and legal pressure, to create major changes that will benefit young people for generations to come.
Gun violence is preventable, but not enough people know that because news coverage tends to characterize it as inevitable and extreme. Stories about mass shootings dominate coverage, even though these tragedies aren’t the major cause of gun deaths in this country. How, then, do the three most common types of gun violence — suicide, domestic violence, and community violence — appear in news coverage? And to what extent are solutions discussed? We explored these questions and more in our latest news analysis.
Trauma is preventable and we, as a society, can and must support our young men of color who are impacted by it, including by changing the public conversation about violence and trauma in our nation. To that end, the Healing Justice Alliance, a partnership between Youth ALIVE!, Cure Violence, the National Network of Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs (NNHVIP), and Berkeley Media Studies Group, created this toolkit to help organizations of all sizes and strategic aims that are working in this space to identify and achieve their communication goals.
