According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2007, nearly half of all American children are either overweight or obese. Retrospective chart review identified patients with the diagnostic codes for overweight, obese, and/or excessive weight gain. Inclusion criteria were current age between 2 and 20 years, a minimum of 5 visits with weight and height measurements, and a body mass index (BMI) at or above the 85th percentile. A total of 184 patients met inclusion criteria. More than half the children became overweight before age 2, and all patients were obese or overweight by age 10. The rate of gain is approximately 1 excess BMI unit/year, therefore causing most children to be overweight by age 2 (R (2) = .53). This study indicates that the critical period for preventing childhood obesity in this subset of identified patients is during the first 2 years of life and for many by 3 months of age.

There has been little empirical research to date on the consequences of mass media change for the processes of government in the UK, despite a well-documented concern since the 1990s with 'political spin'. Studies have focused largely on the relative agenda setting power of political and media actors in relation to political campaigning rather than the actual everyday workings of public bureaucracies, although UK case studies suggest that the mass media have influenced policy development in certain key areas. The study of government's relations with media from within is a small but growing sub-field where scholars have used a combination of methods to identify ways in which central bureaucracies and executive agencies adapt to the media. We present the results of a preliminary study involving in-depth interviews with serving civil servants, together with archival analysis, to suggest that media impacts are increasingly becoming institutionalized and normalized within state bureaucracies; a process we identify as mediatization. A specific finding is a shift in the relationship between government, media and citizens whereby social media is enabling governments to become news providers, by-passing the 'prism of the media' and going direct to citizens.

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Despite widespread critiques of 'political spin', the way governments engage with the mass media has attracted relatively little empirical attention, despite its "increasing centrality to democratic governance" (Moore, 2006, p11; K Sanders, 2011). Recent studies of northern European public bureaucracies' responses to mediatisation from within have identified tensions between bureaucratic and media logic and values (Figenschou and Thorbjornsrud, 2015; Fredriksson et al., 2015). This supports wider claims that the traditional dividing line between government information and political propaganda has come under increasing pressure as a higher premium is placed on persuasion by both journalists and politicians battling for public attention (Foster, 2005; Kunelius and Reunanen, 2012). The arrival of Labour in 1997 after 18 years in opposition was a watershed for UK government communications, allowing the government to reconfigure its official information service in line with the party political imperative to deploy strategic communications as a defence against the new "media-driven 'name, blame and shame' environment"(Lindquist & Rasmussen, 2012). PR, in government as elsewhere, has grown in scale, scope and status to become "a form of work that is increasingly central to economic and cultural life due to the power and influence it commands" (Edwards, 2011; Miller, 2008). However, within the system of executive selfregulation of government publicity, civil servants who specialise in media relations must negotiate between the need to inform citizens about the government's programme, and, demands by ministers to use privileged information to secure and maintain personal and party advantage in the struggle for power. Taking 1997 as a turning point, and through the voices of the actors who negotiate government news-mainly press officers, but also journalists and special advisers-this paper examines the changing role and position of Whitehall press officers in what has become known as the age of political spin, finding a profound and lasting change in the rules of engagement.

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