Blog this week?

Are we supposed to blog this week? I never know anymore. But just in case here we go :)

Unfortunately, I missed class last week : / After it taking me over 36 hours to get back from North Carolina, and 4 airplanes to get home, I was absolutely wrecked. So I missed the guest lecture : /. But I hope it was interesting.

The three readings, while long were interesting.

Grier & Bryant: Social Marketing in Public Health did a nice job of really clarifying what social marketing is, what the different components of social marketing, what public health professionals typically misunderstand about social marketing, and how they could use all of social marketing to strengthen their campaigns. Overall the article was very informative and provided some good insight.

Miller: Community Stakeholders and Marketplace Advocacy: A Model of Advocacy, Agenda Building, and Industry Approval.
Overall this article was pretty dry and took quite a while to get through (yay lots of air time). Here is an example of why: "issue advocacy campaigns involve informing, educating, and
persuading the general public and specific stakeholder groups about the
contributions of business to society and its contribution to the economic
health of the community (Sethi, 1979), while indirectly reducing the potential
for government intervention in corporate activities resulting from public
calls for investigations of, or protection from, industry". So while informative it was dry and tedious. Understanding advocacy, its benefits and barriers and how to use it is important, particularly if we want to make substantial changes in our country's health. However, I think it just isn't quite my cup of tea.

Wallington et al: Challenges in Covering Health Disparities in Local News Media:
An Exploratory Analysis Assessing Views of Journalists.
This article was interesting as it analyzed the views of various types of journalists. I found their views actually kind of surprising. I didn't think they were actually as interested in the topic as they discussed being. Also, I thought it was interesting that there is not one person who addresses the topic, so doing health disparities is difficult as a journalist. Finally I found it important to note that while getting the facts is important and doing pieces with meaning are important, if they don't do their job, which is to get people to read their newspaper, watch their station or listen to their show, they get fired. So the key to being a successful journalist is to entertain and then to report factual important news.

Thats all for now. See ya tuesday!