ChildHood Overweight and Obesity Starts Early (CHOOSE). So Should Prevention: A social marketing campaign in New York's Greater Capital Region

One in four New York State children is overweight or obese, yet three quarters of parents do not recognize their children as overweight. Despite this high prevalence, there has been very little research targeting behavior change to prevent obesity in preschoolers. Since parents are often the gatekeepers and role models for developing healthy behaviors in young children, they are in a key position to help prevent childhood obesity. To increase community awareness about pediatric obesity, we formed a public/private sector collaboration to develop the CHOOSE social marketing campaign targeting parents of 2-5 year olds. The campaign ran for four months in New York's Greater Capital Region. The CHOOSE campaign included billboards, a website (www.HealthyKidsNY.org), an online parent-community survey in a widely read regional newspaper, and educational materials. CFBP staff found that most existing childhood obesity prevention messages were fear-based and insensitive to the psycho-social impact of obesity in the pediatric population. CHOOSE messages were developed based on information gained through parent focus groups and the application of behavior change theories, the four P's of social marketing and the best practices for outdoor advertising. Messages and designs were pre-tested among a representative sample of the target audience and reviewed by an expert panel for cultural sensitivity. Evaluation was conducted through 1) potential reach; determined to be 18 million exposures during the billboard campaign based on estimated daily traffic counts, and 2) web traffic counts on HealthyKidsNY.org; viewed 5,657 times by 2,973 visitors. The online community survey was completed by 256 parents.