Public Health Report: Reducing Sugar Sweetened Beverages Consumption

This report presents a public service announcement (PSA) focused on reducing the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) due to their association with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other health issues. The report outlines the message, emphasizing the health risks associated with SSBs and their impact on weight gain and related comorbidities. It then explores media strategies, specifically highlighting television as an effective medium for delivering the PSA, detailing its advantages such as broad reach and flexibility in presenting information. Furthermore, the report draws parallels with the Medicare Part D campaign, analyzing its strategies for successful implementation. These strategies include expanding medical coverage, creating a marketplace for prescription drugs, preventing high healthcare costs, encouraging generic drug use, and focusing on beneficiary satisfaction. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of these strategies in promoting public health and reducing the negative impacts of SSB consumption, offering insights into effective communication and public health campaigns.

Running head: Communication
Communication of Public Service Announcement
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Contents
Public Service Announcement on reducing the consumption of Sugar Sweetened Beverages :
....................................................................................................................................................2
Media selected to deliver the message and how are they helpful:.............................................2
Strategies utilized from the Medicare Plan D campaign and how are they helpful:..................3
References:.................................................................................................................................5

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Public Service Announcement on reducing the consumption of Sugar Sweetened
Beverages :
Are you pouring out the pounds? Sugar Sweetened Beverages are one of the leading
causes of obesity in the United States and even One Soda can be too much for your kids, as it
contains more sugar than what the kids should consume in an entire day. Sugary drinks can
also increase risk of Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cavities. Diabetes causes more deaths
than car accidents, and it can be caused by drinking sugar sweetened beverages. Drinking
sugary beverages can also increase the weight gain by 6.5 Kg every year, thus increasing the
risks of Obesity and related co morbidities (Inamura et al., 2015).
Media selected to deliver the message and how are they helpful:
The media that can be selected to deliver the Public Service Announcement Above
can be television. In this approach, video narratives can be broadcasted to the public in the
prime times for maximum reach to the target audiences, involve well known celebrities to
narrate the announcement, to further improve the reception of the message by the public.
The advantages of television as a medium to deliver Public Service Announcement
include the ability to reach a large number of audiences at the same time (Keene & Lang,
2016). Televised broadcast of public announcements are also convenient media, owing to its
widespread popularity and also allows flexibility in the use of various approaches to deliver
the message using various combinations of audio, video, and texts using various forms of
presenting and narrating the information (Steemers, 2017). The popularity and massive reach
of television also helps to create a larger impact, which can be further increased through
effective presentation of the message to attract the target audience. The televised messages
can also be repeatedly broadcasted at various time slots, thereby helping to reach a diverse

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crowd of television viewers, which can help to further deepen the impact and reach of the
messages (Sehl et al. 2016).
Strategies utilized from the Medicare Plan D campaign and how are they helpful:
Different strategies were utilized during the implementation of the Medicare Part D
campaign, which allowed it to overcome its challenges to implementation. These strategies
included:
i. Expanding and improving the medical coverage for prescription drugs
ii. Creating a marketplace for the coverage of prescription drugs
iii. Creating a permanent program for prescription drugs preventing the runaway expenses
iv. Creating restraints on the price of drugs without using price control measures
v. Encouraging encouraging patients to use drugs of lower price like generic drugs
vi. Preventing expensive care at hospitals as well as other conditions that are avoidable by
better using the prescription drugs.
vii. Focusing on the happiness of the beneficiaries and providing them new ways of receiving
coverage for drugs which involves their active participation
viii. Protecting the financial assets of the seniors from catastrophic costs due to the costs of
drugs.
ix. Ensuring an increase in the enrollment by low income Medicare beneficiaries
x. Ensuring continuous review and improvement of the Medicare Part D policies by
improving enrollment, low income assistance and beneficiary assistance with plan choices.
(Kendall, 2013)

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These strategies ensured that the Medicare part D provided maximum coverage for
prescription drugs and reduce the costs of hospitalizations. Most importantly, the policies
focused on the providence of coverage to those beneficiaries in the most need of the medical
coverage, like elderly patients with lifelong conditions, preventing the high cost of continued
medical coverage on their financial condition.

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References:
Imamura, F., O’Connor, L., Ye, Z., Mursu, J., Hayashino, Y., Bhupathiraju, S. N., & Forouhi,
N. G. (2015). Consumption of sugar sweetened beverages, artificially sweetened
beverages, and fruit juice and incidence of type 2 diabetes: systematic review, meta-
analysis, and estimation of population attributable fraction. Bmj, 351, h3576.
Keene, J. R., & Lang, A. (2016). Dynamic motivated processing of emotional trajectories in
public service announcements. Communication Monographs, 83(4), 468-485.
Kendall, D. (2013), How Medicare Part D Beat the Odds—and Why Policymakers Should
Care. Retrieved on July 6, 2018. From: https://www.thirdway.org/report/how-
medicare-part-d-beat-the-odds-and-why-policymakers-should-care
Sehl, A., Cornia, A., & Nielsen, R. K. (2016). Public service news and digital media.
Steemers, J. (2017). Industry engagement with policy on public service television for
children: BBC Charter Review and the Public Service Content Fund. Media Industries
Journal, 4(1).