Are You Drinking Yourself Sick? (South Africa)
“Are you drinking yourself sick?”
National media campaign (October 2016-June 2017) by South African civil society, supported by Vital Strategies, that showed the health harms of sugary drinks and built support for a proposed sugary drinks tax, which became the Health Promotion Levy in 2018.
- Years
- 2016–2017
- Country
- South Africa
- Topic
- Nutrition
- Asks people to
- StopSupport a policy
- Strategy
- Fear appealPolicy paired
- Channel
- OutdoorRadioSocial (paid)TV
- Audience
- Adults
Evidence
ObservationalPositive
Pre- and post-campaign household surveys (1,000 each): 55% recalled the campaign; knowledge that sugary drinks cause obesity and related disease rose, and campaign awareness was associated with more support for government action including the tax (Murukutla 2020).
Sponsor (who paid)
- Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA) NGO, campaign owner
- Vital Strategies NGO, technical support
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Sources
- Murukutla N, Cotter T, Wang S et al. Results of a mass media campaign in South Africa to promote a sugary drinks tax. Nutrients 2020;12(6):1878 evaluation · 2020 · DOI 10.3390/nu12061878 · PMID 32586040
Research notes
Created 2026-10-22 by OpenAlex literature mining (openalex-deep pass); evidence level, outcome and findings are paraphrased from the evaluation abstracts, full texts not read. No credits: no page naming an agency was checked. Sponsor (HEALA, Vital Strategies support) from search-result summaries of Vital Strategies pages, not opened. Channels and the fear-appeal tag are a best guess from descriptions of the TV spots; confirm.
Record cases/za-are-you-drinking-yourself-sick.json, updated 2026-10-22· Link to this campaign