Regular readers know the past several months have been full of bad news for public health, so I’m happy to be able to highlight something positive: Policy findings from five different communities that took very different approaches to tackling gender health disparities. Articles about their experiences were recently published in a supplement to the journal […]
Food Safety & Nutrition
More soda tax success: Study finds Mexico’s tax reduced sugary beverage buys two years in a row
Another day, another study that shows soda taxes work to reduce the consumption of beverages associated with costly chronic diseases in children and adults.
The final day at the APHA annual meeting featured speakers addressing long-acting reversible contraceptives, examining news coverage of health, and connecting farmers’ markets to people receiving food assistance.
After years of alarming increases in child and adult obesity and billions spent to treat related medical problems, one might think health organizations and soda companies would be on firmly opposite sides of the fence. But a new study finds that a surprising number of health groups accept soda sponsorship dollars, inadvertently helping to polish the public image of companies that actively lobby against obesity prevention efforts.
Food Safety & Nutrition
Study finds Berkeley soda tax led to a huge decrease in sugary drink consumption
On the question of whether a soda tax can actually reduce the amount of sugary drinks people consume, a new study finds the resounding answer is “yes.”
When a group of researchers supported by the HHS Office on Women’s Health set about designing a weight-loss intervention for lesbian and bisexual LB women, they ran into a challenge: Many lesbian and bisexual women are averse to the idea of weight loss.
With national school nutrition standards up for reauthorization in Congress, a new survey finds that most Americans support healthier school meals.
Education
Study: Self-affirmation targets the brain in way that makes us receptive to health messaging
It’s a persistent conundrum in the field of public health — how can we open people’s minds to positively receiving and acting on health information? Previous research has found that combining health tips with messages of self-affirmation may be a particularly effective strategy, but researchers weren’t entirely sure how self-affirmation worked at the neurological level. Now, a new study has found that self-affirmation’s effects on a particular region of the brain may be a major key to behavior change.
It’s not unusual for studies on community walkability to face the perplexing question of self-selection. In other words, people who already like to walk end up moving to walkable communities and so those communities naturally have higher physical activity rates. In even simpler terms, it’s about the person, not the environment. However, a new study finds that walkable community design does influence healthy behavior — even among people with no preference for walking in the first place.
Education
The more you know: Study finds calorie signs do influence sugary beverage purchases among youth
In ongoing public health efforts to curb the obesity epidemic, better menu and nutrition labeling is often tapped as a low-cost way to help make the healthy choice, the easy choice. And while the evidence on the effectiveness of such interventions is still emerging, a recent study found that educating young people on the calories in sugar-sweetened beverages did make a positive difference.