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Biomedical subjects

L Wallack

Publications and source records attributed to L Wallack.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1999

The California Violence Prevention Initiative: advancing policy to ban Saturday night specials.

The California Violence Prevention Initiative (VPI) was conceived in 1993 as a 5-year, $35 million comprehensive community, media, research, and policy advocacy effort to reduce violence among youth. The VPI included an emphasis on three broad policy areas: shifting society's definition of violence to include a public health perspective, reducing access to alcohol and other drugs, and limiting availability of handguns. For the first 3 years of the VPI, the policy focus was on reducing the availability of handguns to youth through efforts to ban the manufacture and sale of Saturday night specials (SNSs). Prior to the VPI, there were no local SNS bans. Now, there are bans in 41 California jurisdictions, including major population centers. After two vetoes of a statewide legislative ban by the former governor, an SNS ban was signed by a newly elected governor.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

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 nation's 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.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Media advocacy: a strategy for advancing policy and promoting health.

The purpose of media advocacy is to promote public health goals by using the media to strategically apply pressure for policy change. It provides a framework for moving the public health discussion from a primary focus on the health behavior of individuals to the behavior of the policymakers whose decisions structure the environment in which people act. It addresses the power gap rather than just the information gap. Media advocacy focuses on public policy rather than personal behavior. This article uses two case studies to illustrate key aspects of media advocacy. The first is a 5-year statewide violence prevention initiative for young people in California. The second focuses on the activities of a mothers' group working to improve public housing. The "new public health," with its focus on participation, policy development, and political processes, could benefit from incorporating media advocacy.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Television beer advertising and drinking knowledge, beliefs, and intentions among schoolchildren.

OBJECTIVES: The relationships between television beer advertising and drinking knowledge, beliefs, and intentions were investigated in a survey of schoolchildren. The research was guided by a theoretical model specifying that awareness of advertising, and not mere exposure, is necessary for it to have an effect on beliefs or behaviors. METHODS: Participants were a random sample of 468 fifth- and sixth-grade schoolchildren from a northern California community. Data were collected in the home with a combination of self-administered questionnaires and structured interviews. RESULTS: Nonrecursive statistical modeling indicated that awareness of television beer advertising was related to more favorable beliefs about drinking, to greater knowledge of beer brands and slogans, and to increased intentions to drink as an adult. The effects of advertising awareness on knowledge, beliefs, and intentions were maintained when the reciprocal effects of beliefs, knowledge, and intentions on awareness were controlled. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that alcohol advertising may predispose young people to drinking. As a result, efforts to prevent drinking and drinking problems among young people should give attention to countering the potential effects of alcohol advertising.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Media advocacy: a strategy for empowering people and communities.

Media advocacy is a new strategy that is emerging in the public health community. It has been particularly visible in communities of color. Media advocacy is defined as the strategic use of mass media to advance public policy initiatives. Media advocacy is rooted in community advocacy and has as its goal the promotion of healthy public policies. It can be differentiated from traditional mass media strategies in a number of ways. Media advocacy shifts the focus from the personal to the social, from the individual to the political, from the behavior or practice to the policy or environment. While traditional media approaches try to fill the "knowledge gap," media advocacy addresses the "power gap." Improvements in health status are believed to come about primarily from gaining more power over the policy environment rather than simply gaining more knowledge about health behaviors.

Community Participation↗
PubMed1992

The role of designated driver programs in the prevention of alcohol-impaired driving: a critical reassessment.

We review the "designated driver" concept and the current debate over its role in preventing alcohol-impaired driving. In our view, the focus on this strategy by broadcasters, the alcohol industry, and various public service groups has deflected attention from other alcohol-related problems that account for the vast majority of deaths and injuries associated with alcohol use. This focus has also distracted many public health advocates and policymakers from the bigger and more important jobs of increasing public awareness of the social, environmental, and economic factors that influence alcohol consumption and promoting debate on legislation and other public policy solutions to alcohol-impaired driving. As part of a comprehensive strategy, we strongly encourage a renewed focus on "sobriety checkpoints," strict enforcement of laws against alcohol sales to minors, alcohol advertising reform, increased excise taxes, and other public policy initiatives supported by the Surgeon General. These measures will curb underage and heavy alcohol consumption and will create a legal and social environment in which individuals are motivated to avoid impaired driving through several alternative strategies, including but not limited to the use of designated drivers.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed1992

A critical analysis of "moderation" advertising sponsored by the beer industry: are "responsible drinking" commercials done responsibly?

This analysis reveals several important advertising trends by the U.S. beer industry, whose purported aim has been to promote "moderation" in drinking. First, the brewers' prevailing interest in promoting consumption has resulted in the use of slogans and messages that ignore the fact that certain people should not drink at all, and, in certain circumstances, that no one should drink. Second, these ads do not consistently make clear that the acts of drinking and driving should remain entirely separate. Third, several aspects of these commercials undermine whatever moderation message they may provide, in particular the use of themes and images that are similar to the beer companies' regular brand promotions. In order to present an acceptable public health message, moderation advertising must not be dominated by glamorous presentations of alcohol consumption. In short, it must be done more responsibly.

Advertising↗
PubMed1992

Advertising for all by the year 2000: public health implications for less developed countries.

This paper argues that the development of global advertising has significant implications for the public health of less developed countries. These implications can be seen in three areas. First, it is clear that advertising and marketing of lethal or health-compromising products like alcohol and tobacco not only can increase the level of death and disease, but can also produce serious indirect effects upon families, communities, and entire societies. Second, advertising promotes a consumption ethic which can have far-reaching effects that go beyond individual behavior, significantly altering social relationships, and influencing public policies and allocation of scarce resources. Third, advertising can restrict the public's knowledge about health issues by substituting distorted and manipulative sales messages for vital, accurate health information. In addition, revenues from advertising are a primary support for many mass media systems and this further limits the presentation of critical information.

Advertising↗
PubMed1990

Alcohol advertising in college newspapers: a 7-year follow-up.

The authors report on the frequency and nature of alcohol advertisements in a representative sample of college newspapers from 1984/85 and compare these with results of a similar study conducted 7 years earlier, in 1977/78. On average, nearly 24 column inches of space per issue were devoted to national alcohol advertisements in 1984/85. This represents a significant decrease from an earlier period. The space devoted to national alcohol advertisements, however, still far exceeded that for comparison products (books, soft drinks). Local alcohol advertisements averaged 20 column inches per issue and were somewhat more frequent than in the previous study. The content of the advertisements differed markedly from the messages presented 7 years earlier. Although national alcohol advertisements in 1977/78 frequently ridiculed education and study, none did so in 1984/85, when appeals were to taste and product quality instead. Fantasy themes also were relatively common. Very few national alcohol advertisements featured athletes or group drinking. Sponsorship of campus activities by the alcohol industry, however, had increased since the earlier study. In contrast to national advertisements, many local advertisements consisted of inducements to drink through special offers and happy hours. Some encouraged irresponsible and heavy drinking. Interestingly, alcohol advertisements were just as frequent in papers from states with higher minimum drinking ages and were more frequent in papers from campuses with higher proportions of women students.

Advertising↗
PubMed1990

Portrayals of alcohol on prime-time television.

Alcohol portrayals were analyzed for a 3-week composite sample of prime-time fictional television programs aired in the fall of 1986. Approximately 64% of the 195 episodes contained one or more appearances of alcohol. Alcohol was ingested on 50% of all programs. Overall, there were 8.1 alcohol drinking acts per hour. Movies made-for-television had the highest rate of drinking acts per hour (10.0) followed by situation comedies (9.2) and then theatrical movies (7.4) and dramas (7.4). Within the category of dramas, evening soap operas stand out with 13.3 acts per hour. Drinking and nondrinking characters were compared on a number of attributes relevant to role modeling. Regularly appearing characters were more likely to drink than nonregular characters. Drinking characters also tended to be of high status, largely being white, upper-class professionals. A time trend analysis showed a regular increase in alcohol on television from 1976 to 1984, reaching 10.2 acts in 1984. After 1984 the trend appears to reverse.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMed1990

Two approaches to health promotion in the mass media.

This article concentrates on two strategies for health promotion in the mass media: social marketing aims to influence people's behaviour, media advocacy to influence their environment. The author argues that greater weight should be given to media advocacy than to social marketing so as to achieve an improved understanding of the conditions required for health.

Health Behavior↗
PubMed1987

Primary prevention: a new look at basic concepts.

Personal health and well-being are gaining priority on the American agenda. A renewed interest in health promotion has been facilitated by the need to contain health care costs, realization of the limits of medicine in preventing illness, and a deeply rooted societal ethic of personal responsibility for individual health. Although the health status of Americans has changed significantly for the better during this century, further improvements are necessary, especially among high risk subgroups within the population who have not been effectively reached by traditional health promotion strategies. Past efforts, aimed at individuals modifying their risk factors, have neglected to address environmental factors that contribute to disease risk. This points to the need for an integrated approach where problems are addressed as properties of the systems in which individuals behave. This paper reviews selected health trends in the United States, discusses limitations of the current approach to health promotion, presents a comprehensive definition of prevention, and provides principles for planning that may facilitate improved health status in this country.

Health Promotion↗
PubMed1987

Alcohol on prime-time television.

Alcohol acts and scenes from a sample of 122 hours of prime-time television programs aired in the fall of 1984 were studied. Approximately 80% of the 116 episodes studied contained one or more appearances of alcohol. The appearance of alcohol on dramatic series was especially high with 9 of 10 episodes containing some verbal or visual reference to alcohol. Alcohol was ingested on 60% of all the programs. Overall, the sample contained 10.65 drinking acts per hour. Dramas, comprising 56% of the sample hours, accounted for most alcohol behavior--11 drinking acts per hour. Put in audience terms, a regular viewer of dramas would be likely to see more than 20 drink acts per evening.

Adaptation, Psychological↗