American journal of preventive medicine
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Low- and middle-income countries, where emerging diseases often make their debut, are also likely to bear the harshest consequences of a potential influenza pandemic. Yet public health systems in developing countries are underfunded, understaffed, and in many cases struggling to deal with the existing burden of disease. As a result, developed countries are beginning to expand assistance for emergency preparedness to the developing world. ⋯ Evidence from the U. S. and other developed countries suggests that some investments in bioterror and pandemic emergency preparedness, although initially implemented as vertical programs, have the potential to strengthen the general public health infrastructure. This experience may hold some lessons for how global funds for emergency preparedness could be invested in developing countries to support struggling public health systems in responding to current health priorities as well as potential future public health threats.
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The VERB campaign promoted physical activity to U. S. children aged 9-13 years (tweens) by surrounding them with appealing messages that were associated with the VERB brand and tag line It's what you do. To maximize the impact of the campaign, VERB had a two-level strategy for its marketing. ⋯ This article focuses on VERB's market segmentation strategy and reports how messages for the general audience were adapted to reach specific racial or ethnic segments of the U. S. population. Findings are reported from qualitative studies conducted with tweens and the parents of tweens from these ethnic groups, and the marketing strategies used to reach each ethnic group and the results of evaluations of those strategies are also described.