Berkeley Media Studies Group -
HEAC Marketing, Advertising and Media Advocacy Technical Support Provider
Organization Overview
At BMSG, we believe that the mass media, especially the news, have a significant influence on people's beliefs and actions regarding public health and social issues. Therefore, all of our work aims to help public health advocates frame their issues from a prevention perspective and harness the power of the news media to advance healthy public policy. We help people make their voices heard in a powerful public forum, and increase their participation in the democratic process.
To do this we must understand how news, entertainment, and advertising present health and social issues. Thus we do research by monitoring the media, studying the process of news gathering, and analyzing media content to support our media advocacy training, professional education, and strategic consultation.
BMSG specializes in conducting media research that can be applied by public health advocates. We have established a body of research that analyzes media content with the specific purpose of informing public health practitioners who have advocacy goals. At bmsg.org you can find our content analyses and case studies on a variety of public health issues, including alcohol; childhood nutrition policy, childhood lead poisoning, children's health generally, child care, and values as they are expressed in news about children's health; youth and violence in television news and newspapers; and general public health issues on television news.
BMSG is anchored in a public health perspective — we use our empirical analyses to inform media advocacy training and strategic consultation with public health advocates working to change policy.
Technical Support for HEAC Grantees
Among the challenges faced by communities confronting obesity is what to do about the corporate marketing practices that make unhealthy foods and beverages attractive, easily available and readily affordable in our communities. Because pervasive mass media advertising campaigns are created by multinational corporations and regulated by the federal government, many local advocates feel powerless to do anything about this issue.
However, what many people don't realize is that food and beverage corporations' marketing practices go far beyond TV advertising - and there are many things local communities can do to limit the reach of corporate marketing. Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG) will guide grantees in The California Endowment's Healthy Eating, Active Communities (HEAC) Program in how to confront these marketing practices through local policy change - so they can begin transform the marketing environment that contributes to persistent and savage disparities in health.
BMSG will begin this work by crafting a toolkit on food and beverage marketing to kids. How are food and beverage companies marketing their unhealthy products to young people? What are their target marketing strategies? How can neighbors, parents, teachers, and young people themselves confront marketing that interferes with creating healthy eating environments in their neighborhoods? The BMSG toolkit will provide examples and stories of what local communities can do about unhealthy marketing practices, so TCE grantees can explore these options in more depth with their own networks and prepare to take action to reduce unwanted marketing and promotion. BMSG will offering trainings for HEAC grantees who want to put the toolkit to use in their local setting. BMSG will also monitor the food and beverage marketing literature and keep tabs on new developments.
BMSG will also work with the HEAC Technical Assistance Team to strengthen the ability of local communities and statewide organizations in California to advocate for obesity prevention policies and programs. Through the TA Team, BMSG will offer its expertise in media advocacy to those grantees who are seeking policy change. BMSG will develop talking points and other materials that help local TCE grantees construct concise, clear, messages that frame obesity prevention policy from a public health perspective. Using the media advocacy materials, TCE's grantees will be better able to educate and engage their policy makers and the public in obesity prevention policy debate.
Contact Information
Katie Woodruff, MPH, Program Director
Berkeley Media Studies Group
2140 Shattuck Ave., Ste 804
Berkeley, CA 94704
510.204.9700 voice
510.204.9710 fax
woodruff@bmsg.org |
Website: www.bmsg.org
