A content analysis of health-related advertisements in Islamic Republic of Iran broadcasting (IRIB)

Background: Media advertisements especially radio and TV are one of the most important and effective ways for health promotion and consumption of healthy productions worldwide. Ministry of Health and some other ministries in Iran agreed to control and restrict the advertising of unhealthy products and services. Therefore, adequate supervision and monitoring should be done in this field.  A content analysis of Health-related Advertisements was done in Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)   Methods: This study was a cross-sectional research and collecting of data was carried out in 2012. Ten selected TV and radio channels were recorded from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. for two successive months in the special weekdays. Broadcasted advertisements data were extracted by the trained observers according to a checklist and analyzed using SPSS 18 software and described with descriptive statistics.   Results: The percentage of different types of advertising were including 73.9% unrelated to health, 21.9% harmless health related, 2.9% less healthy, 1.3% harmful or harmful with a probability of abuse. Non-harmful to health advertisements included 95.86% of total advertisements out of ten TV and radio channels; and the remained advertisements (4.14%) were related to the harmful, less healthy foodstuff and detrimental services and products. Also, 0.8% of the advertisements were shown during children programs.   Conclusion: The main findings of the current study revealed that majority of the advertisements of Islamic Republic Broadcasting were unrelated to health. It seems advertising of harmful for health in IRIB was less than 5%, and the levels of these type ads were less than the other countries. Even so, the policymakers need to pass and enforce some executive and governing law for the prevention of broadcasting unhealthy advertisements to increase the society health level and prevent the diseases resulted from unhealthy products causing the considerable damages in a long time.