Increasing Public Awareness of the Risks of Alcohol Use During Pregnancy Through Targeted Media Campaigns

Effective media campaigns create awareness, change attitudes, and motivate individuals and communities to engage in healthy behaviors. Successful campaigns target specific audiences taking into account the unique preferences and needs of particular groups. The targeted media campaign is one strategy to enhance current prevention efforts related to fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and other prenatal alcohol-related effects. Evidence-based approaches to the design, implementation, and evaluation of these types of projects are needed to determine the most effective strategies for use in media campaigns aimed at reducing prenatal alcohol use.

Funded Projects:

St. Louis University—St. Louis, Missouri
This project designed, implemented, and evaluated a media campaign targeting African-American women, aged 18 through 35 years, at risk for pregnancy. The primary purpose of the campaign was to increase knowledge and change attitudes about alcohol use during pregnancy. A comprehensive media campaign was developed using a variety of strategies including visual, audio, and print advertisements, direct marketing, media interviews with experts, and community event exposure. The campaign was built around four core messages: (1) drinking alcohol during pregnancy harms unborn babies, (2) pregnant women should abstain from alcohol, (3) sexually active women should not drink if they could be pregnant, and (4) women at risk for an alcohol-exposed pregnancy should see a physician. Evaluation of the intervention consisted of pre- and post-intervention random-digit dialing surveys of the African-American community both in St. Louis and Kansas City (control group).

University of California at Los Angeles—Los Angeles, California
This project developed, implemented, and evaluated a social marketing campaign using a “narrowcasting approach” that warned women about the dangers of drinking alcohol during pregnancy. Narrowcasting refers to information that is directed to a highly specific segment of the public. The purpose of the project was to change norms and perceptions of women who are light or moderate drinkers both prior to and during pregnancy. The target groups included White, Hispanic, and African-American women, aged 18 through 30 years. Print materials were developed and disseminated, saturating specific neighborhoods in two communities of southern California over a 12-month period, with a third community serving as a comparison group. Project partners worked with community participants and professional agencies to create high-quality campaign messages and materials. Evaluation consisted of a repeated cross-sectional survey design.

University of Iowa—Iowa City, Iowa
The goals of the project were to design, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of a broad-based and localized media campaign aimed at reducing prenatal alcohol use in rural areas, targeting women enrolled in the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Through formative research, project staff produced commercial-quality materials for dissemination in three channels (a broad based 30-second television commercial, an eight minute video for localized distribution in WIC clinics, and a printed pamphlet for distribution in WIC clinics) to increase awareness about the dangers of alcohol use during pregnancy. WIC clinics in rural Iowa were paired and randomly assigned to usual-care or intervention groups. The usual-care group was exposed to the 30-second commercial and printed pamphlet, while the intervention group was exposed to messages in all three channels. Evaluation consisted of pre- and post-test surveys assessing changes in knowledge, interactions with health care professionals, reported alcohol use, and perceptions of normative expectations in the social network regarding consumption of alcohol during pregnancy.

Related Publications:

Glik D, Prelip M, Myerson A, Eilers K. Fetal alcohol syndrome prevention using community-based narrowcasting campaigns. Health Promotion Practice 2008;9(1):93-103. [Abstract]

Mengel MB, Ulione M, Wedding D, Jones ET, Shurn D. Increasing FASD knowledge by a targeted media campaign: Outcome determined by message frequency. Journal of FAS International 2005;3(e13):1-14. [Abstract]

Glik DC, Prelip M, Myerson A, Eilers K. Narrowcasting campaign for community programs: creating health messages for targeted media campaign. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Health and Media Research Group. 2004. http://www.ph.ucla.edu/chs/hmrg/

Baxter LA, Hirokawa R, Lowe JB, Nathan P, Pearce L. Dialogic voices in talk about drinking and pregnancy. Journal of Applied Communication Research 2004;32(3):224-248. [Abstract]

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