Lori Dorfman

More Than a Message: Framing Public Health Advocacy to Change Corporate Practices

Framing battles in public health illustrate the tension in our society between individual freedom and collective responsibility. This article describes how two frames, market justice and social justice, first articulated in a public health context by Dan Beauchamp, influence public dialogue on the health consequences of corporate practices. The authors argue that public health advocates must articulate the social justice values motivating the changes they seek in specific policy battles that will be debated in the context of news coverage. The authors conclude with lessons for health education practitioners who need to frame public health issues in contentious and controversial policy contexts. Specific lessons include the importance of understanding the existing values and beliefs motivating the public health change being sought, the benefits of articulating core messages that correspond to shared values, and the necessity of developing media skills to compete effectively with adversaries in public debate.

Youth and violence on local television news in California.

OBJECTIVES This study explores how local television news structures the public and policy debate on youth violence. METHODS A content analysis was performed on 214 hours of local television news from California. Each of the 1791 stories concerning youth, violence, or both was coded and analyzed for whether it included a public health perspective. RESULTS There were five key findings. First, violence dominated local television news coverage. Second, the specifics of particular crimes dominated coverage of violence. Third, over half of the stories on youth involved violence, while more than two thirds of the violence stories concerned youth. Fourth, episodic coverage of violence was more than five times more frequent than thematic coverage, which included links to broader social factors. Finally, only one story had an explicit public health frame. CONCLUSIONS Local television news provides extremely limited coverage of contributing etiological factors in stories on violence. If our nations most popular source of news continues to report on violence primarily through crime stories isolated from their social context, the chance for widespread support for public health solutions to violence will be diminished.

Hey Girlfriend: An Evaluation of AIDS Prevention among Women in the Sex Industry

Increasingly, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) prevention programs have been developed to reach and influence street-based populations. Standard methods of evaluation do not fit the conditions of such programs. This article describes a process and outcome evaluation of an AIDS prevention program for sex workers in which qual itative and quantitative methods were combined in order to mediate research problems endemic to street-based populations. Methods included epidemiological questionnaires, open-ended interviews with participants, and ethnographic field notes. Process evaluation findings show that field staff who were indigenous to the neighborhood and population readily gained access to the community of sex workers and simultaneously became role models for positive behavior change. Outcome findings show that sex workers do feel at risk for AIDS, but usually from clients rather than from husbands or boyfriends. Ac cordingly, they use condoms more frequently with clients than with steady partners. Increasing condom use among sex workers with their steady partners remains an important challenge for AIDS prevention. Combining qualitative and quantitative research data provided a more comprehensive assessment of how to reach sex workers with effective AIDS risk reduction messages than either method could have provided alone.

Nutrition Content of Food and Beverage Products on Web Sites Popular With Children

We assessed the nutritional quality of branded food and beverage products advertised on 28 Web sites popular with children. Of the 77 advertised products for which nutritional information was available, 49 met Institute of Medicine criteria for foods to avoid, 23 met criteria for foods to neither avoid nor encourage, and 5 met criteria for foods to encourage. There is a need for further research on the nature and extent of food and beverage advertising online to aid policymakers as they assess the impact of this marketing on children.

Marketing Sugary Cereals to Children in the Digital Age: A Content Analysis of 17 Child-Targeted Websites

The Institute of Medicine has warned of the harm of food marketing to children from television to new media channels such as the Internet. The authors identified and analyzed the techniques used to engage children on websites from cereal companies—the third largest food marketer to children. The authors found that top breakfast cereal manufacturers maintain child-oriented websites, using strategies unique to the Internet to capture and maintain childrens attention. These include branded engagement techniques such as advergames, videos, site registration, and viral marketing, including inviting friends to join the site. The authors found 3 progressive levels of telepresence on child-targeted cereal websites: sites with more than 1 engaging feature, multiple techniques present on individual pages, and the construction of a virtual world. Using Internet traffic data, the authors confirm that these techniques work: cereal marketers reach children online with lengthier and more sophisticated engagements than are possible with traditional, passive media such as television advertisements or product packaging. Despite the cereal manufacturers self-regulatory pledge to improve their marketing to children, their marketing practices exploit childrens susceptibility to advertising by almost exclusively promoting high-sugar cereals using deeply engaging techniques.

Functional truth or sexist distortion? Assessing a feminist critique of intimate violence reporting

Journalism assumes reporters are able to pursue ‘functional truth’ - an account of issues and events reliably describing social reality. But researchers have often found systematic bias. In reporting about cross-gender violence, critical feminist scholars contend that news media devalue violence against women and often blame the victim while mitigating or blurring the perpetrator’s responsibility. The present study is the first in the USA to test this critique as it applies to reporting the vast social pathology of intimate-partner violence. Consistent with the critique, intimate violence was covered much less often and with less depth than other violence of similar gravity. In contrast, however, the newspapers studied very rarely blamed female battering victims or mitigated suspect blame.

Health messages on television commercials.

Background and Purpose. Television is an important source of health information in the United States, yet little research has focused on the presentation of general health issues on television. This preliminary study reports on the health-related content of television commercials found on a typical television day. Methods. We conducted a content analysis of a composite day of television comprising 20 hours randomly selected over a three week period (April-May 1989). Findings are presented regarding health messages found in commercial time — advertisements, public service announcements (PSAs), editorials, and promotions for upcoming programs. Results. Overall, 31 % of the 654 commercial spots contained health messages. Most health messages were claims of good nutrition in food and beverage advertisements. PSAs comprise 1.4% of the 20-hour sample and 5.8% of the commercial time. Health messages appeared in 38% of PSAs, accounting for less than seven minutes. Not one PSA addressed tobacco, alcohol, or diet — the three leading behavioral risk factors for poor health. Discussion. PSAs are usually seen as a mechanism by which the public health community can alert the public to important health issues. Given the declining pool of PSA time, public health educators will need to seek alternative strategies for influencing television content, such as media advocacy. In addition, further research on audience interpretation and response to commercial messages is suggested.

News Coverage of Child Sexual Abuse and Prevention, 2007–2009

News media coverage of child sexual abuse can help policymakers and the public understand what must be done to prevent future abuse, but coverage tends to focus on extreme cases. This article presents an analysis of newspaper coverage from 2007 to 2009 to describe how the daily news presents and frames day-to-day stories about child sexual abuse. When child sexual abuse receives news attention, the stories focus primarily on the criminal justice details of a specific incident rather than contextual information about causes of and solutions to child sexual abuse, and prevention is rarely addressed. We offer suggestions for strategies that advocates can use to help reporters improve news coverage so that it better contextualizes child sexual abuse and links it to prevention policies.

Coverage of childhood nutrition policies in California newspapers.

children and teens is on the rise. Approximately one in five children are considered overweight, with the I ^ number of overweight children doubling in the past (t q two decades (i). This leads to a generation at risk ~._v~ . for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and other serious health problems. Recent reports document an alarming rise in type z diabetes and hypercholesterolemia in overweight youth (i). Policies related to public health issues such as childhood nutrition are often influenced by news coverage of these issues. The purpose of this content analysis research is to give public health professionals an understanding of how the issue is portrayed in the news and thus, by extension, presented to policy makers and the public. News coverage has a strong impact on what issues the public and policy makers consider important and how they interpret and respond to those issues (2).

Cigarettes Become a Dangerous Product: Tobacco in the Rearview Mirror, 1952–1965

Tobacco controls unparalleled success comes partly from advocates broadening the focus of responsibility beyond the smoker to include industry and government. To learn how this might apply to other issues, we examined how early tobacco control events were framed in news, legislative testimony, and internal tobacco industry documents. Early debate about tobacco is stunning for its absence of the personal responsibility rhetoric prominent today, focused instead on the health harms from cigarettes. The accountability of government, rather than the industry or individual smokers, is mentioned often; solutions focused not on whether government had a responsibility to act, but on how to act. Tobacco lessons can guide advocates fighting the food and beverage industry, but must be reinterpreted in current political contexts.