Banning Advertising Unhealthy Products and Services in Iran: A One-Decade Experience

During the past decade, Iran's health system has attempted to prohibit advertising of unhealthy products and hazardous services. Considerable success has been achieved in the fields of public places and print media advertisements. Conversely, efforts were not effective enough in the fields of TV and radio advertisements. Over the last three years, the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education has published a list of unhealthy products and services on an annual basis. The list has been developed using a criteria-based mechanism, and compared to the previous list that was developed based on the consensus of the main stakeholders. This approach resulted in a significantly shorter list that consisted of three groups: 1) a number of unhealthy food products, 2) some cosmetic products and services, and 3) all tobacco products. We suggest that future strategies should focus on close monitoring of effective implementation; improving inter-sectoral collaboration; making industries more socially accountable; and increasing public demand for protecting children against exposure to hazardous advertisements.