Project Summary
The research team seeks to tackle the harmful effects of sugar-sweetened beverage marketing to Indigenous youth. The team is facilitating a social marketing / media literacy campaign that will be developed by and for the Navajo community with the goal of strengthening cultural identity and healthy beverage consumption among Navajo children.
Research Questions/Aims
- Develop a youth-led campaign designed to promote water consumption and strengthen cultural identity among Diné youth ages 6-14
- Pilot test the campaign in a Navajo community
- Identify outcome measures for future research on the campaign’s effect on health and wellbeing
Actionability
- Provide insight into how community-led social marketing campaigns can be developed and implemented to combat the powerful influence of corporate advertising on children's nutrition and self-representation; and
- Through partnership reflection, identify opportunities for policy, system, and environmental change and recommendations for future sustainable campaign efforts to combat the effects of commercial determinants of health on health and wellbeing among Navajo youth.
Racial Equity Implications
Commercial determinants of health have a pervasive influence on shaping youth behavior and health, promoting poor nutrition, market saturation, and cultural misrepresentation, and undermining mental health. This leads to diet-related health conditions which disproportionately affect American Indian and Alaska Native, Latino, and African American children, who are more targeted by sugar-sweetened beverage corporations, as compared with white children. Meta-analyses show that child-directed marketing is associated with greater intake, choice, and preference for unhealthy products. The impact of marketing on Native youth is two-fold, influencing children to consume less healthy items while eroding cultural identity and well-being. The project team hopes that strengthening positive social norms of water consumption and shared cultural identity at the community level will be an effective strategy to counter discriminatory commercial determinants of health.
Outcomes
Health outcomes: beverage habits among children, empowerment through positive self-representation, cultural connectedness, and changes in social norms at the community level.
Other outcomes: marketing literacy
Methodology
The research team will work with Navajo youth, communications specialists, artists, and elders to develop, pilot, and evaluate a culturally grounded campaign. The pilot evaluation will include collecting survey and interview data from multiple parties, including youth ages 6 to 14 and their caregivers, local decision makers, and the broader community. This will be carried out as community-engaged formative research using a single-arm, mixed-methods prospective study.
