Media Coverage of We Can!® Peaks in 2011

Posted May 12, 2011

You may have just read the stories—in this Spring 2011 eNewsletter—about the new We Can! television public service announcements (in both English and Spanish) hitting the airwaves, and about other ways that we are reaching Spanish speakers nationwide.

However, this spring and summer, there are even more efforts to build awareness that eating right, being more active, and reducing screen time are the keys to maintaining a healthy weight.  They include the creation and placement of We Can! ads and stories in the following publications:

• Parenting magazine:  The May edition contains a two-page spread dedicated to We Can! and its healthy lifestyle behaviors; see the image at right.  The average age of this publication’s 550,000 readers is 33 years, and 75% of them have children 12 or younger.
• African-American Weeklies:  We Can! is running ads—again, focused on healthy lifestyle choices—in 14 of these weekly newspapers over the course of the spring. 

• Student National Medical Association:  An ad about our core behaviors also ran in the April 2011 Student National Medical Association conference brochure.

• Community Newspapers:  Two new pre-written stories (known as matte articles) about We Can! are running in community-level newspapers and other local publications nationwide.

Just in case you haven’t heard, since its launch nearly 6 years ago, We Can! has made nearly 1.4 billion potential impressions (not including the outreach above).  There has been a surge in the number of people the program has reached over the past year thanks to a combination of the following outreach efforts surrounding the program’s 5th anniversary in 2010: 

• The placement of We Can! posters promoting the program and its core messages—eat right, move more, and spend less time in front of the screen—on buses and in subway stations in 13 regions.  This bus/subway campaign ran from June to September 2010 and led to some 335 million impressions nationwide.
• Matte articles about the program placed online and in community-level newspapers across the United States.  These pieces, still available for publication and your use, have so far garnered nearly 265 million online impressions and 43 million print impressions.
• Local media coverage (television, radio, and print) of regional trainings held from Alaska to Maine, and places in between, gathered an additional 251,233 impressions.

With your help in spreading the word in your communities, we hope to continue building upon these successes, creating even greater awareness of and participation in We Can! programs coast-to-coast, and energizing an even greater number of parents, caregivers, and communities to help children maintain a healthy weight.