The FTC and the Department of Health and Human Services is planning a jointly sponsored workshop on Marketing, Self-Regulation, and Childhood Obesity on July 14th and 15th in Washington, D.C. The workshop will be the first of its kind and aims at bringing together the concerns and interests of the medical community, food and beverage marketers, media, and entertainment companies to discuss the issue of children’s obesity.

HHS secretary Michael Levitt has identified children’s obesity as one of the “major health challenges facing the nation.” The two-day workshop, says FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majora, will allow affected industry professionals to devise strategies for dealing with the new issue and perhaps creating a self-regulatory body between industries.

Practice Pointer: Clients should be encouraged to participate in and support self-regulatory bodies. These bodies can actually work to reduce the amount of adversarial proceedings against private companies, and reduce the cost of reworking advertising.

This entry was posted by Tsan Abrahamson on Tuesday, July 5th, 2005 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.