More than a third of children and adolescents in the United States take vitamins even though professional medical organizations do not endorse their use in healthy children. Regardless of their efficacy, children's vitamin products are aggressively promoted. Therefore, the goal of this study was to describe and analyze advertisements related to vitamins in the following three popular parenting ...

BACKGROUND Magazines are a commonly used source for health and fitness information. Little is known about the nature and extent of weight loss strategies and products presented in mainstream women's health and fitness magazines. METHODS This preliminary cross-sectional study evaluated the prevalence of articles and advertisements featuring weight loss content and products in mainstream US-bas...

BACKGROUND Poor self-rated health (SRH) is socially patterned with health communication inequalities, arguably, serving as one mechanisms. This study investigated the effects of health information seeking on SRH, and its mediation effects on disparities in SRH. METHODS We conducted probability-based telephone surveys administered over telephone in 2009, 2010/11 and 2012 to monitor health info...

PURPOSE To investigate whether alcoholic beverages popular among underage youths are more likely than those less popular among these youths to be advertised in magazines with high underage youth readerships. METHODS We compared the alcohol advertisement placement in 118 magazines during the period 2002 to 2006 for alcoholic beverages popular among youths to that of alcoholic beverages less li...

Men overestimate the degree of muscularity that is attractive to women, and women overestimate the degree of thinness that is most attractive to men. Consistent with the thesis that sociocultural input influences such body type preferences and beliefs, we postulated that magazines aimed at a male audience would portray a more muscular male body ideal than would magazines aimed at a female audie...

An exploration of the pages of two psychiatric hospital magazines, Speedwell from Holywell Hospital, Antrim, and The Sketch from Downshire Hospital, Downpatrick, reveals the activity-filled lives of patients and staff during the 1960s and 1970s. This was a time of great change in mental health care. It was also a time of political turbulence in Northern Ireland. With large in-patient population...