In this presentation, Mark Chenery, co-founder and director of Common Cause Australia will outline key findings from a childhood obesity message testing project he conducted on behalf of VicHealth in 2020. The primary objective of the research was to identify messages that increase support for policy measures that address childhood obesity in Australia – such as restrictions on unhealthy food marketing. A secondary objective was to explore how to avoid stigmatising or alienating children above a healthy weight and their parents when talking about these topic areas.
The research included a public discourse analysis of over 8,000 words of language data from media articles, political debate, social media discussions and popular culture on the topics of food marketing and childhood obesity. This was followed up with extensive message testing on a nationally representative sample of over 1,200 people. Mark will take participants through the main recommendations to emerge from the research – including key words, phrases and frames to either replace or embrace in future communications.