Upstream

I just wanted to post a quick notice about another health communication blog that readers might want to check out - Upstream. I was particularly interested in the thoughts on the STI awareness game (discussed here), and agree with the conclusion that the game might not have the kind of interactivity that (1) the target audience is used to and (2) to promote behavior change. Anyway, for those interested in health communication, that's another good place to spend some time.

2010 Michael & Susan Dell Lectureship in Child Health And Social and Environmental Solutions to Obesity Conference

On Wednesday I attended the 2010 Michael & Susan Dell Lectureship in Child Health And Social and Environmental Solutions to Obesity Conference, which was a great event. I had never heard two of the main speakers (Kelly Brownell and Ken Warner) speak in person before, and they both had a lot of interesting things to share.

A couple things that I thought were particularly interesting...

The Rudd Center has a revenue calculator that lets you play with the revenue that could be generated by a tax on soft drinks in states/cities. Of course I had to play with a bit, and it looks like Texas could raise over a billion dollars with a $.01/oz tax on sugared beverages. Very neat tool.

It also popped up in the conversation that there is a front group (Americans Against Food Taxes) that is out there working to fight against the idea of taxing "bad" (however you define bad) foods. I hadn't seen that group before, though I'm not surprised that it's out there.

Overall it was a very interesting conference, I'm definitely looking forward to next year.

New Interactive Tobacco Map

I just got an e-mail from RWJ about this today, and I thought it was quite excellent - a new interactive tobacco map that shows a nationwide picture of tobacco policies in the U.S. It lets you see how things evolve over time, check out state policies and tax rates, etc.

The map is available here.

This is just a great example of health communication that can help the average public (in addition to researchers and policymakers) see the big picture about what's going on with a particular topic (in this case tobacco control policy) around the country. Very nicely done.

My Home in an Advertising Department

I have to say there are plenty of times that I'm exceptionally happy that I work and teach in an advertising department. I enjoy the classes I teach, and the students are creative. Hard to complain, really.

But a couple days ago I was even more appreciative of my advertising home, as I watched some undergraduate students tackle a photo shoot for a new hand washing campaign we're developing. The basic idea for the campaign grew out of a class project a few semesters ago, and this semester I was able to build a team of graduate and undergraduate students to develop the new campaign. The undergraduates are the copywriters and art directors, and on Monday we tackled a photo shoot in a local coffee shop to give them the images they're going to need to create the campaign.

I'm pretty Photoshop-impaired, so I'm always impressed that starting with a pile of raw images they're able to come up with great looking ads - the final product is always impressive. I'll post more about this once we have some of the rough ads in place, but for now I just wanted to express my general satisfaction working in an advertising department - the students bring such a fresh perspective to health promotion, it makes for exciting and productive research.

This American Life: 81 Words

I'm going to be making a presentation tomorrow on message design for low health literate audiences, so I've been a bit busy this week...

So just to get something up here, I'd like to recommend that everyone go listen to This American Life from this past weekend: 81 Words. It's an old (2002) episode that looks into history behind the APA's decision in 1973 that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness. It's a GREAT episode, and it was new to me.