September 16, 2002                For Immediate Release             

For More Information Contact: Dr. Susan Linn, 617-232-8390

                                    Joe Kelly, (218) 348-1251

NY Summit Asks: Does Marketing Damage

 Children’s Health? 

(New York City)   Children see more than 40,000 advertisements a year on TV alone.  During peak kid viewing times, most of those ads are for food – and most of those food ads hawk candy, fast food, soda, and other foods full of fat and sugar.

Any wonder that rates of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, eating disorders, and other childhood health problems are on an unprecedented climb?

Get some answers at the national summit “Consuming Kids: Marketers' Impact on Children's Health” from 8:30 to 11:00 AM on Friday, September 20, 2002 at the Yale Club of New York, 50 Vanderbilt Avenue in Manhattan. 

Featured summit speaker Dr. Michael Brody, M.D., University of Maryland Professor of psychiatry and Chair of the TV/Media committee of the American Academy Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, says, “The sick child as viewer/consumer has replaced the healthy child of play, sports and make believe.”

Dr. Susan Linn, Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says, “Even as marketing experts convene elsewhere in the Yale Club for Kidscreen Magazine’s Advertising and Promoting to Kids conference, we are gathering doctors, psychologists, educators, nutritionists and activists to detail the harms of marketing to children.  Childhood obesity, eating disorders, violence, rampant materialism and other societal ills are all linked to excessive marketing to kids.”

Sponsored by the national Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children (SCEC) coalition, the summit is open to everyone concerned about the well being of children. 

Following the summit, at 11:00 a.m., a protest of the Kidscreen conference-- and its Golden Marble Awards which honor commercials aimed at children--will be held outside the Yale Club.  For more, see SCEC’s website at www.commercialexploitation.com/summit_information2002.htm