Housing impacts health in widespread, well-documented ways. But does media coverage reflect this? To find out, BMSG analyzed news from the San Francisco Bay Area — the epicenter of the crisis — and paid special attention to how equity and health appear in coverage. While the analysis focused on local news, our report provides insights for housing advocates across the country.
In nearly 60 percent of the families where domestic violence is identified, some form of co-occurring child abuse is also present. But does the news make this connection clear? In this analysis, we explore how the child welfare system is portrayed in the news, including whether solutions are present and how race and gender appear in coverage. And we provide recommendations for steps that practitioners and journalists can take to strengthen reporting on this issue.
The hostile political climate facing immigrants in many parts of California means that communicating strategically and centering equity in those narratives is both challenging and urgent. To better understand the current conversation around immigration, BMSG conducted a news analysis of media coverage in four California counties. We explored the factors driving coverage, whose voices are over- or under-represented, the degree to which health is present, and whether the news about immigration contains stigmatizing language.
The foreclosure crisis has had more than just financial consequences for families throughout the United States; it has also been linked to negative mental and physical health outcomes and has disproportionately harmed communities of color. What role, then, should local health departments (LHDs) play in addressing social determinants of health, such as housing? In this article for the journal Health Equity, BMSG’s Katherine Schaff and Lori Dorfman report that more than a quarter of LHDs engaged in work related to the foreclosure crisis, and 30 percent of those surveyed said that LHDs should work on this issue.
To end violence, we need to invest in the communities most affected by violence and the solutions that we know are effective. Doing that requires changing the way policymakers and the public think, talk, and write about violence. BMSG developed this toolkit to help practitioners, advocates, residents, and others frame violence from a community perspective and harness the power of the media to achieve change.
Twenty years ago, The Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media found that nurses were cited as sources in only 4% of health news stories. In 2017, researchers from Berkeley Media Studies Group and the George Washington University School of Nursing’s Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement replicated the study and found that nurses remain invisible in health news media, despite their increasing levels of education, unique roles, and expertise.
This toolkit, developed in partnership with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, includes a range of resources to help build relationships with journalists and inform news coverage about sexual harassment, abuse, and assault.
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.
