For decades, mass media has enabled behavior change campaigns for everything from smoking cessation to increased cancer screening to adopting healthier diets.  In the realm of infant health, a number of campaigns have successfully encouraged parents to place babies to sleep on their backs, thereby reducing the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and resulting in sharply declining death rates.  While not all health-related mass media campaigns are effective, when properly supported, they have the potential to produce powerful changes in a community that can dramatically improve health outcomes.

Here are three innovative, global campaigns that have influenced the lives of babies and young children, and also improved outcomes for premature infants.

“Be A Star” Campaign  Encourages Breastfeeding

This campaign, launched in the UK in 2007, turned that concept on its head by promoting young mothers from local communities as breastfeeding “celebrities”.  Through posters and radio ads, breastfeeding mothers were portrayed as glamorous and beautiful and encouraged other mothers throughout the community to rise to the celebrity status of their peers through breastfeeding.  The campaign was impactful and resulted in a 12% increase in breastfeeding initiation rates among moms under the age of 25 in Central Landshire, UK, where the campaign was first launched. Discover more here.

Hand Hygiene Improves with SuperAmma Campaign

Developed by the Hygiene Centre to promote hand hygiene across 14 rural villages in India, the Super Amma campaign was built around the idea of an ordinary mother portrayed as an aspirational “super-mom” teaching her son to adopt good manners to become successful in life.  Through a collection of billboards, videos, posters and music, this fictional character was brought to life, and was effective at improving hand washing rates in the villages from 2% to 30%. .  Hand washing with soap is such a critical practice for reducing the spread of disease among children that since then a global coalition has been formed to establish October 15 as Global Handwashing Day.

Pequeños y Valiosos (Young and Valuable) Campaign Closes the Word Gap

Research has shown that greater levels of early language exposure can help young children foster language and healthy brain development.  In partnership with Too Small to Fail, Latino media company Univision Communications launched a multi-media campaign last year to encourage US Hispanic parents to use everyday moments to engage in language-rich activities – like talking, reading and singing – with their young children.  Through news programming, online resources, digital content and mobile apps, the campaign aims to inform the US Hispanic community about the importance of language for early learning and provide the audience with simple tools to help them incorporate more speaking with their kids into their daily lives.  Although this campaign was just recently launched, the initiative has already reached millions of Hispanic families.

While these campaigns have produced wonderful results, few campaigns have specifically addressed the needs of premature babies, which number 15 million each year around the world.  In time, Pebbles of Hope plans to launch such campaigns to educate parents and the public at large about ways to protect and improve the health outcomes of the tiniest babies.  Stay tuned for more information on upcoming Pebbles of Hope campaigns and activities.