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Food Marketing to Children and Youth



Over the past four decades, our nation's childhood obesity rate has tripled, resulting in a national health crisis.  In December of 2005, Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity? was released by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).  Drs. Sandra Calvert and Ellen Wartella of the Children's Digital Media Center were members of the NAS committee who studied this issue and who wrote this book about how marketing practices are contributing to childhood obesity.. 

On Thursday, February 23, 2006, the Children's Digital Media Center and the Center for Research on Children in the United States hosted a family policy forum on Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity? This forum brought together members of the National Academy of Sciences panel who discussed what families and policy makers can do to protect children from advertising and marketing practices that promote unhealthy diets as well as explored how those same techniques can lead to healthier diets. 

Panelists included J. Michael McGinnis, M.D., M.P.P., the Chair of our report and a Senior Scholar at the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies; Robert Post, Ph.D., J.D., and the Davies Professor of Law at Yale Law School; Ellen A. Wartella, Ph.D., and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at the University of California Riverside; and Sandra L. Calvert, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Director of the Children's Digital Media Center. 

This forum was supported by gifts from the Stuart Family Foundation and by grants from the Georgetown University Graduate School and from a Georgetown University-wide Initiative on Reflective Engagement in the Public Interest.   

Awards:
2005 - Sandra Calvert received the Outstanding Applied/Public Policy Research Program Award from the International Communication Association

2005 - Sandra Calvert received a distinguished achievement in scholarship and research at Georgetown University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

May 19, 2004—Washington, DC— Senators Lieberman, Brownback, and Clinton introduced the Children and Media Research Advancement Act (CAMRA), a bill designed to provide competitive funding for researchers to examine the effects of media on children's development

Review the CAMRA bill here.
Read Senator Joseph Lieberman's statement here.


In 2003, the Children's Digital Media Center hosted a symposium
featuring child development specialists studying the role of television
and interactive digital media on children. The panel of experts
discussed the gaps in research in the children and media area.
Special guests included:

 
Senator Sam Brownback   Senator Joseph Lieberman

Complete transcript

Featured Experts

  • Daniel Anderson, Ph.D., the University of Massachusetts
    Presentation | Bio
  • Sandra Calvert, Ph.D., Children's Digital Media Center at Georgetown
    University
    Presentation | Bio
  • Amy Jordan, Ph.D., Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of
    Pennsylvania
    Presentation | Bio
  • Gary Knell, president and CEO, Sesame Workshop
    Presentation | Bio
  • John P. Murray, Ph.D., Kansas State University
    Presentation | Bio
  • Michael Rich, M.D., Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of
    Public Health
    Presentation | Bio
  • Donald Roberts, Ph.D., Stanford University
    Presentation | Bio
  • Dorothy Singer, Ph.D., Yale University Family TV Research and
    Consultation Center
    Presentation | Bio
  • Moderated by Ellen Wartella, Ph.D., Children's Digital Media Center
    and the College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin
    Bio
  • Special guest Senator Joseph Lieberman
    Senator Lieberman's statement

Hosted by the Children's Digital Media Center at the College of
Communication at The University of Texas and the Department of
Psychology at Georgetown University.