Using mass media to promote healthy eating: A community-based demonstration project

Background. Many question whether mass media, in the absence of other progr amming, can produce significant and sustained behavior change. Methods. The 1% Or Less campaign in Wheeling, West Virginia (population 35, 000), used paid advertising and public relations to encourage members of on e community to switch from whole or 2% milk (high-fat milk) to 1% or fat-fr ee milk (low-fat milk). The study used a quasi-experimental research design with one intervention city and one comparison city. The effectiveness of t he campaign was evaluated by collecting milk sales data from supermarkets a nd conducting pre- and postintervention telephone surveys in intervention a nd comparison cities. Results. In the intervention city, low-fat milk sales increased from 29% of overall milk sales before the campaign to 46% of sales in the month follow ing the campaign. The increase was maintained at the 6-month follow up. Acc ording to the telephone surveys, 34.1% of high-fat-milk drinkers reported s witching to low-fat milk in the intervention community compared with 3.6% i n the comparison community (z = 13.1, P < 0.0001). Conclusions. A media-only approach was sufficient to encourage a significan t proportion of the people in one community to alter the dietary habit targ eted by the intervention. (C) 1999 American Health Foundation and Academic Press.