Musculoskeletal Advertising Focuses on Whites and Overlooks Minority Communities

Introduction Demographic disparities in musculoskeletal (MSK) health exist in the US. Racial representation in advertising has been shown to influence buying patterns. By focusing advertising toward majority groups, direct-to-consumer advertising may exacerbate MSK disparities by neglecting underrepresented minorities. To better understand how race is represented across MSK advertisements and how this may influence patterns in MSK health, we reviewed advertisements in popular magazines, using online databases for collection. Methods 8 magazine types were chosen. Racial distribution was analyzed using Pearson’s chi-squared and chi-squared goodness of fit tests. Fisher’s exact test was used when >20% of cells had n<5. Significance was set at p<0.05. Results Of advertisements that featured a model, white models were overrepresented (p<0.001), and Hispanic and Asian models were underrepresented (p<0.001). Only 7.3% of advertisements featured multiple models of different races or ethnicities, while 92.7% did not. African American models were overrepresented as athletes (p<0.001) and underrepresented in pain relief ads (p<0.001). Discussion There is poor representation of minorities in MSK advertisements. Even when controlling for US population demographics, white models were overrepresented, and models of minority races are underrepresented. African American models were typecast as athletes and underrepresented in pain relief ads.