Georgia’s recent campaign highlighting childhood obesity, which has received lots of recent press, is an example of what not to do to help this public health problem.

This campaign, called Strong4Life, was created with the hope that a “in your face” commentary on childhood obesity would move parents and kids to lose weight and get healthy. You can see the videos here.

This is an example of an uninformed, anti-fat-person campaign. It is exceptionally shaming, and pitches precisely the opposite approach to what is needed to build community recognition and action on this very important problem.  Centrally, the approach levies a negative, alarmist, critical light on a problem that needs understanding, not shame – a problem that needs an encouraging and affirming light that leads to positive appreciation and engaged attention aimed at what will be gained, rather than trumping on a kind of kick-in-the-butt attack.

The latter may produce quick action, but there is no evidence that it will produce anything but a burst of shame-based energy that will get washed over when that burst exhausts.