WHO NCD Lab Innovators at the Global Forum for Adolescents: The power of young voices to counter harmful marketing practices that drive NCDs

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and mental health conditions can have a significant impact on children and adolescents. Risk factors such as physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, tobacco use and harmful use of alcohol often negatively affect child and adolescent health and wellbeing and cause poor health outcomes in adulthood. Some 70 per cent of the premature deaths that occur among adults are estimated to stem from health-related behaviours that originate in childhood and adolescence.

The prevalence of NCD mortality and morbidity is worsened by industry players who continue to flood the market and encroach on community environments with unhealthy products, spanning from alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy foods including sugary beverages and junk food. Commercial entities spend billions of dollars every year on advertising and marketing strategies that encourage the consumption of unhealthy products among young people, which is at odds with the human rights to health, accurate information, privacy and freedom from exploitation, as codified in the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child, UN Declaration of Human Rights, and other international treaties and conventions.

The power of young voices to counter harmful marketing practices

At the Global Forum for Adolescents, held on 11 and 12 October 2023, the NCD Alliance, Children in All Policies 2030 (CAP-2030), NCD Child and the World Health Organization convened a session to launch a new publication on marketing policy. Titled “Selling a Sick Future: How to counter harmful commercial marketing towards children and young people across risk factors for NCDs”, the report developed by NCD Alliance and CAP 2030 highlights how young people can inform policies to counter and adapt to marketing strategies by health-harming industries that target children and adolescents. The session also called for a commitment by governments to regulate harmful commercial marketing practices, including the marketing of unhealthy products, and protect the health and wellbeing of children and young people.

Knowledge

Selling a sick future: countering harmful marketing to children and young people across risk factors and NCDs

One of the speakers at the session was Gabriel Cortez, a Poet, Educator, Organizer, and Former Director of The Bigger Picture, a project selected by the NCD Lab during its inaugural cycle in 2021. The Bigger Picture empowers young people from low-income and marginalized backgrounds to use creative literary tools to expose and counter the harmful drivers of diabetes in their communities, particularly the marketing and sale of unhealthy products like sugar-sweetened beverages.

He noted that The Bigger Picture inspires students to “speak back to power” by framing type 2 diabetes as an issue that is shaped by the marketing and sale of harmful products. Through creative approaches like poetry, hip hop and short films, The Bigger Picture engages young people in a way that resonates with their own lives, experiences, and stories of what they notice about their surroundings. For example, they are encouraged to question why water fountains do not work in some areas, how many liquor stores versus grocery stores there are in a neighbourhood, or what can be found in their refrigerator at home and how it got there.

Country Stories

Unmasking the drivers of type 2 diabetes through poetry and multimedia: The Bigger Picture public health literacy campaign (United States of America)

“One of the most powerful ways to activate young people is to help them understand that they are being targeted, that they are being treated wrongly by unjust systems, and that they have the power to do something about it”, said Gabriel Cortez, acknowledging the vital role that young people play in countering harmful marketing practices.

"One of the most powerful ways to activate young people is to help them understand that they are being targeted, that they are being treated wrongly by unjust systems, and that they have the power to do something about it."

Gabriel Cortez, Poet, Educator, Organizer, and Former Director of The Bigger Picture

The Bigger Picture has had widespread positive impact. The campaign helped pass the United States’ first ever city-wide soda tax in Berkeley, California, which later spread to San Francisco and Oakland. The campaign also inspired many young people to challenge the unhealthy food and beverage offerings at their schools and start having conversations with their families, taking what they learned and bringing that knowledge back home.

The NCD Lab: Supporting innovators to shape global policy and practice on NCDs

The NCD Lab is a WHO platform that identifies and supports grassroots innovations on NCDs to achieve sustainable impact through scale. By inviting selected innovators to share their experiences and perspectives at global health forums and events, the NCD Lab leverages the value of locally adapted innovations and community-driven solutions towards addressing the burden of NCDs in communities and countries.

Read more about how the NCD Lab supports its selected innovators in shaping global policy and practice on NCDs.