Reach far: Criteria to improve the effectiveness of social marketing intervention strategies in the obesogenic environment

People around the world are getting fatter; in 2000, for the first time in human history, the number of overweight people in the world equalled the number of underfed, with 1.1 billion in each group. However, informed observers and researchers know that childhood obesity is the real problem to be tackled as research has shown that childhood obesity tracks with fidelity into adulthood. This paper provides a review of the obesogenic environment and presents a framework which seeks to improve the potential success of intervention strategies specifically in the obesogenic environment. A thorough discussion and analysis of the key issues is provided throughout the paper, which concludes with eight criteria to assist social marketers in developing potentially useful intervention strategies in this area.