The three-year $7.4m (拢4.7m) national campaign, run out of Porter Novelli's Washington DC office, will tell Americans to increase fruit and vegetable consumption to reduce the risk of chronic disease. It is funded by the National Cancer Institute, and will use advertising, media relations and strategic partnerships to get its message across.
For the first time since the National Cancer Institute started promoting the national "5 A Day for Better Health" campaign, a specific portion of the budget has been allocated to targeting African Americans.
Michael Frisby, director of public strategies at Porter Novelli Washington, said: "We will find creative ways to bring the '5 A Day' message to African Americans, a demographic group that suffers disproportionately from chronic diseases, in part, because of their poor eating habits."
Health authorities in the US are becoming increasingly worried about the problem of obesity, with increasingly radical suggestions for tackling the problem. There are currently class action lawsuits against some of the country's biggest fast-food chains, including McDonald's and KFC, in which complainants say the companies did not warn about the possible effects of eating their food.
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