World-leading expert to promote healthy living

Jul 29, 2005

Are teenagers influenced to smoke and drink by slick marketing campaigns?

Do fast food advertisements on television contribute to childhood obesity, diabetes and lung cancer?

These questions will be answered on Monday 1 August when the University of Wollongong receives a visit from a world-leading social marketing expert who will be promoting healthy living at a special public forum.

Professor Gerard Hastings and his colleagues at the Institute of Social Marketing and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Control Research at the University of Stirling in Scotland have found that the marketing of alcohol, cigarettes and fast food is implicated in health-threatening consumption.

The Institute is now calling for tighter controls on the promotion of these products, especially to children and teenagers.

Professor Hastings' lecture, entitled “Controlling Bad Marketing: Harnessing Good” will discuss the influential power of television advertising in promoting healthy living and reducing the incidence of life style diseases.

With one in every two people in western societies dying due to preventable life style behaviour (according to the American Journal of Public Health), Professor Hastings said it was time to start influencing advertisers to be more responsible about the messages they are sending to the public.

The lecture being held from 6pm to 8pm in Room 7, Level 1, of the McKinnon Building at the University is being presented by UOW's Office of Community and Partnerships and the Centre for Social Marketing Research in the Faculty of Commerce.

Media please note:

Professor Hastings will be available ahead of his public lecture at 10.30am on Monday, 1 August for photos/filming/interviews at Food Re-Thought (near the foyer of the McKinnon Building, Bldg 67). He can be contacted on the following mobile number: (0011) 447889 788932.

Further information can also be obtained by phoning Leanne Crouch in the Office of Community and Partnerships on 4221 3110.