Many millions of people around the world experience the pervasive, and often painful, societal messages of colorism, where lighter skin tones are asserted to be more attractive and to reflect greater affluence, power, education, and social status. Even in places where the destructive effects of colorism are fairly well understood, far less is known about the problem of skin-lightening (really, it's "skin bleaching") creams and lotions, and the health risks that consumers assume with these products. In this teaching case, the protagonists are two women who have recently immigrated to the United States from Nigeria and Thailand, both with a life-time of experience with these products like many of the women of their home countries. As the story unfolds, they struggle along with the rest of the characters to copy with the push and pull of community norms vs. commercial influences and the challenge of promoting community health in the face of many societal and corporate obstacles. How can the deeply ingrained messages of colorism be effectively confronted and transformed to advance social change without alienating the community members we may most want to reach?

Modeling is a glamorous and lucrative profession only for the very few. Most fashion models make little money, and often they are subject to indifferent or even abusive working conditions, putting them at elevated risk of sexual harassment and eating disorders. Legislators in the fictitious U.S. state of Columbia are the latest to join in the global movement to rectify some of the most egregious wrongs done to models in the fashion industry, after the death of a teenage model with an eating disorder prompts a new law and attention to the problem. Safiya Goplani, a physician and researcher in Hamilton, Columbia's capital, is eager to investigate the new legislation and hopes to apply the methods of community-based participatory research to develop a close partnership with professional models. But as Goplani and her team quickly learn, establishing priorities and shared goals requires a lot more attention to the partners' unique perspectives than a typical research study. Will Goplani and her team be able to successfully forge a partnership with the model community and carry out the new research study?

Working out at the gym is a healthy endeavor, but many gyms endorse unhealthful practices. They may advertise or sell dietary supplements for weight loss or muscle building that not only fail to do what they promise, but contain potentially dangerous ingredients. Callie Guertin is a primary care physician in Hamilton, in the fictitious U.S. state of Columbia, and a daily gym-goer who is slowly awakening to the fact that her chosen new gym, MuscleTone, sells weight-loss supplements at its welcome desk. She wants them to stop; but what can she do on her own? With some guidance from a young activist, Stacie Lubin, and her sympathetic personal trainer, Rudi, Guertin learns skills of coalition building to pressure the MuscleTone chain to change its practices. Perhaps, using principles of corporate social responsibility, or CSR, MuscleTone can be made to realize that abandoning sales and advertising of supplements can produce a good result for everybody-healthier customers, of course, but also a new marketing campaign touting MuscleTone as the gym for "healthy living"? Guertin and her allies are working on MuscleTone to make just this case.

School nurse Hazel O'Leary and her supportive principal, Jamal Morden-Jones, strive to effectively respond to weight-related cyberbullying at their middle school. While there is a district-wide bullying prevention and intervention program guide that supposedly has all the necessary guidance on the subject, the duo still find themselves scrambling to implement the plan in the school, highlighting the gap between policy and practice. As the case study ends, Hazel prepares to initiate her school's first foray into the world of logic models for public health program planning.

Colburn University is the largest private university in the fictitious state of Columbia and is often recognized by people from distant parts of the country for its award-winning Division I athletic teams. That's why when athletic director Harry Ritchie makes an offhanded comment about Colburn student-athletes with eating disorders, the press pounces. This incident coupled with a complaint from a parent draws the attention of Dean Francis Reilly, who finds himself needing to peel back some of the layers embedding college athletics on the issue of eating disorders among athletes. Throughout the narrative, different perspectives on sports and eating disorders are revealed from top-level administrators, like Dean Reilly, to the student-athletes themselves. As the story concludes, the conversation about eating disorders has begun, but questions still remain on how to make Colburn University a healthy environment for its student-athletes.

Fictitious Colburn University boasts many "amenities" for its students, including cafes, a gymnasium, and U.V. tanning salon Campus Tans. Meredith Tang, a law student originally from Australia, and Barbara Holly, a public health student, cannot believe that this insidious industry has infiltrated campus life and worse yet seems to be promoted by the school, or at least is allowed to advertise on campus. Soon these students turned activists begin a campaign to evict the salon; however, they quickly discover that evicting Campus Tans may not be as easy as they thought. As the story ends, the student activists sit down to a meeting with school officials and the owner of the salon to negotiate an agreement that protects the health of Colburn students while balancing the interests of diverse stakeholders.

Nefertiti Nelson, a senior official at the Columbia Department of Public Health (CDPH) in the fictitious U.S. state of Columbia, has been asked by the governor's office to examine the cost-effectiveness of administering BMI and eating disorders screenings in schools. To carry out the project, Nefertiti and her team of CDPH colleagues join forces with the consulting firm, Datamon; yet, as the analysis begins questions quickly arise about the logistics and costliness of implementing the screenings, potential outcome measures, and the interests and concerns of respective stakeholders.

How does one learn to become an effective advocate? "Beauty and the Breast: Mobilizing Community Action to Take on the Beauty Industry" tells the story of protagonist Joe Wendell, known as Wendell, an emergency room nurse and widower raising a teenage daughter in Franklin, a largely working class town in the fictional US state of Columbia. One day his daughter announces she would like to have breast implants. The distressing news prompts Wendell into new, unforeseen directions as he learns all he can about implants and surgery, the "beauty culture" permeating society especially in his community, and the psychological development of teenagers. Though relieved to find out that as long as she is a minor she cannot legally obtain the surgery without his consent (and, no doubt, without his cash), Wendell starts to believe that greater protections for teen girls in Columbia are needed. In this effort he is guided by the confident figure of Anna Pinto, director of a community center in an East Franklin neighborhood with a vibrant Brazilian-American community where cosmetic surgery, especially for girls and young women, is something she perceives to be a particular problem and has some ideas about how to address.

Gisele Rodriguez, MPH, moved back to her hometown, East Point, in the fictional U.S. state of Columbia, after graduate school and joined the Columbia Department of Public Health (CDPH). Working with a marketing firm, Gisele and colleagues set out to create an obesity prevention campaign; however, the resulting product is met with community and national backlash for its stigmatizing messages and images. At the end of the story, CDPH releases a request for proposals to invite applications from community agencies to develop a new campaign that is both evidence-based and solicitous of community ideas and input, thus more likely to be effective and engender community-wide acceptance and support.