Breastfeeding can improve women’s and babies’ health, but simply trumpeting that message won’t improve breastfeeding rates. That’s because many social and cultural barriers make it difficult or undesirable for women to breastfeed. This framing brief shows advocates the key ingredients they need to produce effective breastfeeding messages that promote policies in support of this very basic but vital act.
This site explores a public health strategy called joint use, which increases opportunities for children and adults to be physically active by allowing schools and communities to share resources like parks, swimming pools and playgrounds. Visit jointuse.org to watch videos of joint use success stories, view PhotoVoice photo essays by youth documenting barriers to physical activity, download fact sheets, research summaries and policy analyses, and find out how to jumpstart a joint use partnership in your own community.
Public health advocates have for years been trying to increase the number of women who breastfeed by educating mothers about its health benefits. Breast milk improves babies’ immune systems and decreases women’s risk of everything from osteoporosis to type-2 diabetes. Reporters have trumpeted advocates’ message, yet breastfeeding rates remain dismally low. In this Issue, we explore what’s missing from the conversation and show how advocates in California are shifting the conversation to include the factors outside of health that make it hard for even the most well-informed women to breastfeed.
New technologies are fundamentally altering the alcohol marketing landscape. Even as the “information superhighway” has given way to a web devoted largely to commerce, marketing is one of the least understood aspects of the new media culture. This report summarizes findings from a study we conducted with our colleagues at the Center for Digital Democracy to identify and analyze the emerging alcohol digital marketing practices and to assess the policy implications for both.
These comments were submitted on behalf of the California Convergence to the White House Interagency Task Force on Obesity to inform it’s recommendations for the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign to eliminate childhood obesity in a generation. The comments emphasize the policies across the four pillars of the Let’s Move campaign that will create healthy food and activity environments, focusing on a multi-sector, community-based approach to inform progress.
After participating in media advocacy trainings from BMSG, the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles leveraged its newly acquired skills to voice opposition to Proposition 6, which threatened to increase the number of crimes for which 14-year-olds could be tried as adults. The group continues to practice media advocacy today.
Middle-schoolers in the Northern California town of Anderson were fed up with the amount of junk food in the check-out stands of their local grocery stores, mini-mart and gas stations. In this case study, we show how the youth, with guidance from the Healthy Eating Active Communities initiative, became savvy about the effects of such junk on their health and took action to make healthy foods and beverages more visible in their community.
Findings from a BMSG study of 28 websites popular with children point to the likelihood that the food and beverage products advertised on the web are ones that kids should avoid.
This framing brief describes the intensive, immersive, incessant marketing tactics soda companies are using to encourage young people to drink more of America’s top non-alcoholic beverage.
BMSG Director Lori Dorfman talks to Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, about how the news frames public health issues. Knowing how a particular issue is portrayed in the media allows advocates to anticipate their opposition’s arguments and gives them a starting point for having conversations with policymakers about potential solutions.
