Public Health Obesity-Related TV Advertising

Abstract

Background-Over the past 25 years, the percent of overweight and obese adults and children in the United States has increased dramatically. The magnitude and scope of the public health threat from obesity have resulted in calls for a national comprehensive obesity prevention strategy, akin to tobacco use prevention strategies undertaken over the past two decades. The purpose of this paper is to describe and compare population exposure to paid media campaigns for tobacco and obesity prevention, draw lessons from tobacco advertising, and compare tobacco and obesity behaviors/influences to identify priorities and pitfalls for further research on obesity adverting.

Televised obesity-prevention advertising across US media markets: exposure and content, 2010–2011

“…However, our previous research showed that between 1999 and 2003, average household exposure to televised obesity-prevention advertising was low, with state and community obesityprevention campaigns airing in a small minority of DMA (32) . While federal obesity-prevention campaign ratings in 2010 and 2011 were exceeded by the VERB campaign in 2002 and 2003, state and community ratings were consistently higher in the current study (a 100 % increase between 2003 and 2010).…”

“…We excluded any advertisements that advocated healthy eating or physical activity in support of some other concrete health goal that did not overlap with obesity prevention, such as those that encouraged healthy diet in order to prevent prostate cancer or to improve performance in school. As previously described (32) , identification of relevant advertisements was typically straightforward based on searches for obesity-and health-related keywords in organization and campaign names. For organizations where we captured any relevant advertisements with our keyword searches, and for all public health departments, we also manually reviewed Kantar's descriptions of all campaigns to ensure data capture was complete.…”

“…In our prior study of public health television advertising from 1999 to 2003, we identified obesity-prevention campaigns sponsored by state or community health departments in only eight states, and overall exposure levels were far outweighed by tobaccoprevention advertising (32) . The launch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's VERB campaign in 2002 represented the first large-scale national obesityprevention television campaign, reaching thirty-nine annual advertisement exposures per household for the top seventy-five US media markets by 2003 (32) . The VERB campaign aired through 2006.…”

“…As in our prior study that assessed data from 1999 to 2003, we quantified exposure for all obesity-prevention campaigns sponsored by federal, state and local governments (32) . In the current study, we also expanded our data set to include campaigns sponsored by non-profit organizations and television stations, calculating exposure levels in each of the top seventy-five US media markets for households as well as for specific audience subgroups including adults, children and teens.…”

Health Promotion with Vulnerable Population Groups

“…The fact remains that in 2005 the number of Americans with three or more chronic illnesses rose to 13%, which coincides with an increase in obesity and sedentary lifestyles (Dunham, 2009). Obesity alone is thought to be responsible for several serious chronic health conditions, all of which can be delayed or prevented if lifestyle changes are made (Anderson, Martinson, Crain, Pronk, Whitebird, Fine, & O'Connor, 2005;Emery, Szczypka, Powell, & Chaloupka, 2007;Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2008;Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2009). …”