Advocates and residents in Sacramento are using a combination of policy change, community power-building, and strategic communication to make it easier for people to take part in urban farming. This case study explores their tactics for strengthening access to healthy food, highlights victories and challenges, and shares lessons learned.
As part of strategic messaging panel for the annual Turning the Tide conference at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, BMSG Director Lori Dorfman discusses the role that environments play in driving health outcomes and how media coverage can influence the policy decisions that create those environments. Studying the news, she explains, can help advocates better anticipate opposition arguments and work with journalists to shape coverage in ways that advance health solutions. Dorfman also highlights basic concepts in framing, addresses ways that the backdrop of individualism in the United States creates obstacles to effective health communication, and gives examples of successful public health campaigns.
Each year, public health advocates and youth organizers in Salinas, California, close traffic to a mile-and-a-half-stretch of one of the city’s busiest streets, transforming it into a community event filled with physical activity and fun. Known as Ciclovía, the event serves a bigger purpose: to reduce violence, forge community bonds, and promote health equity. To understand how organizers are advancing those goals, this case study explores the origins of Ciclovía, its successes and setbacks, next steps and lessons learned.
Letters to the editor can signal community interest about a particular public health issue and send a message to policymakers. But what makes for a compelling letter, and how can advocates increase their chances of getting published? To support public health advocates in writing effective letters on the importance of how taxes can advance health and equity, BMSG and Public Health Awakened created this resource.
The way we communicate about sexual violence can make a big difference in how our intended audience understands the problem and what to do about it. In this framing brief, we explore the nuances of framing sexual violence and provide building blocks for constructing messages about prevention.
Media advocacy is one of the few public health education tools we have that allows us to work “upstream” to address the conditions and inequities that harm the public’s health. Media advocacy, used as a tool to accelerate and amplify community organizing and policy advocacy, can direct the public and policymaker attention to the policies that can reshape our social and physical environments so public health concerns can be effectively addressed. This chapter, from “Community and Public Health Education Methods: A Practical Guide,” teaches students to think strategically about working with the news media to advance public health policy.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a critical public health issue with implications for every sector of society, but communicating about them can be challenging. In this news analysis, we explore whether advocates have been able to successfully explain the implications of childhood trauma, including how solutions appear in news coverage and whether the link between children’s environments and the trauma they experience is visible.
When advocates communicate about junk food marketing, do they talk about health equity? In this framing brief, we describe findings from a content analysis of materials on food marketing, show why children of color should be at the forefront of our conversations about and actions to reduce target marketing, and suggest how we all can get better at discussing this critical public health and social justice issue.
Amid ongoing global concern about obesity, public health scholars need to be informed of the nature and extent of Big Data’s impact on food marketing. In this article for Critical Public Health, BMSG’s Laura Nixon and Lori Dorfman, along with our partners Kathryn Montgomery and Jeff Chester from the Center for Digital Democracy, explore how Big Data has transformed the food marketing system and offer suggestions for research strategies and public health interventions. Without interventions, the authors argue, the current system will increase health inequities.
