Recorded presentation

Armando Valdez, PhD, PRISM (Pacific Research Institute for Social Marketing), 201 San Antonio Circle, Suite 152, Mountain View, CA 94040, 650 917-6600, avaldez@aol.com

The goal of this public education campaign was to increase awareness of childhood obesity and promote improved nutrition and physical activity among low-income residents of rural San Benito County, California. The presence of numerous Latino farmworker families in the region prompted a bilingual campaign in English and Spanish to reach the community at large. The campaign opted to use radio as a cost-effective medium to deliver the campaign messages to the target audiences, and produced two different 60-second radio spots for the campaign in each language: one on five-a-day and the other on physical activity. Formative research was used to develop and calibrate the campaign messages. The radio spots featured a value statement regarding children’s health and happiness, and a behavioral prompt with specific suggestions on what parents could do to improve their children’s health. The five-a-day radio spot presented a main idea and a corollary message embedded in the spot, whereas the physical activity presented a single main idea. The main idea in the five-a-day radio spot promoted consumption of five fruits and vegetables per day; the radio spot also provided a rubric to gauge the size of a serving for a child as well as an adult. Each of these two radio spots was produced in English and in Spanish, the latter with appropriate linguistic and cultural adaptations. At the conclusion of the six-week broadcast campaign, an audience reach study was conducted to assess the extent to which the intended audiences were exposed to the campaign messages.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of the session, learners will be able to (
• identify the behavioral constructs employed in designing the campaign messages, (
• describe the methods used to target the intended audience, and (
• apply comparable methods to their campaigns to reach low-income rural populations.

Keywords: Nutrition, Obesity

Related Web page: none

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

Recorded presentation