Massachusetts

Legislation Updates

Despite having great support in the Joint Committees of Public Health and Healthcare Finance, S.1525/H.4271 did not pass in the House Committee of Ways and Means this year. The bill ran into a hitch when the committee ran out of time at the end of the session. We thank you for your advocacy and support of the bills and are saddened to hear the news that they did not move forward this session in Massachusetts.

We will not be giving up, and are excited to be back in action on this campaign next year!

Thank you Massachusetts Representative Khan and Senator Rush for being champions of bills to protect young people from dangerous weight loss and muscle-building supplements.

Introduced by Massachusetts Representative Kay Khan and Senator Michael Rush in the 2023-2024 Massachusetts legislative session, An Act protecting children from harmful diet pills and muscle-building supplements (H.2215/S.1465), would protect kids from dangerously underregulated over-the-counter diet pills and muscle-building supplements by restricting the sale to adults 18 years or older.

Helpful materials:

Want to get involved with the Out of Kids’ Hands Campaign in Massachusetts? Contact us at STRIPED@hsph.harvard.edu

STRIPED News

The STRIPED team was awarded the Abstract of the Year award by the American Public Health Association’s Law Section for our abstract: Algorithms, Addiction, and Adolescent Mental Health: An Interdisciplinary Study to Develop State Legislative Action to Protect Youth from the Dangers of Social Media.

Congratulations to STRIPED Youth Corps member Chuying Huo! She was just named by Forbes magazine as one of the “13 Teens Changing the World” this year for her research on barriers to eating disorders treatment access and advocacy with STRIPED to ban the sale of toxic over-the-counter diet pills to minors.

Big News! Our bill banning the sale of over-the-counter diet pills and muscle-building supplements to youth has been signed into law by Governor Hochul. Read the lawmakers’ press release and a feature article by the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. This achievement speaks volumes about the dedication of all of our incredible bill sponsors, community partners, advocates, and youth of New York—Thank you to all for your hard work!

New STRIPED report: Advancing De-implementation of Universal BMI Surveillance. We organized a two-day seminar with over 20 experts from diverse backgrounds to explore and promote the de-implementation of universal BMI surveillance, aiming to address the harm it can cause to individuals.

The dietary supplement industry targets cisgender women with harmful supplements by using deceptive claims about weight loss, cleansing/detoxing, boosted immunity, and higher energy. In STRIPED’s new study, we found that weight discrimination increased their risk of using potentially harmful supplements.