Using TV for Health Education
Dec. 5, 2008 by Lisa Currie
The WebMD column Sex Matters shared an interesting item recently — televison shows can effectively be used to educate on health issues. Read on…
The Kaiser Family Foundation, in collaboration with the writers and producers of Grey’s Anatomy, conducted a study of how information about health could affect the accuracy of knowledge of the show’s viewers. They decided to pick a topic that had some relevance but was still was obscure enough to offer the possibility of measuring a change in the level of knowledge: HIV-positive women giving birth.
Throughout an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, two characters repeatedly emphasized the health fact that with proper medical treatment, HIV-positive pregnant women have a 98% chance of giving birth to a healthy baby not infected with HIV. Researchers measured both level of knowledge and attitude of regular viewers of the show with these questions:
- As far as you know, if a woman who is HIV positive becomes pregnant and receives the proper treatment, what is the chance that she will give birth to a healthy baby – that is, a baby who is NOT infected with HIV?
- Do you agree or disagree: it is irresponsible for a woman who knows she is HIV positive to have a baby?
To see whether the education level and attitudes were affected by the show, the study used three different sample waves. Each wave used a separate sample of 500 regular viewers of Grey’s Anatomy. read full article here…