Class explores how media impacts perceptions of health issues; University of Pittsburgh, University Times, July 11, 2024

MARTY LEVINE, University of Pittsburgh, University Times; Class explores how media impacts perceptions of health issues

"Communicating a message through storytelling, and not the mere recitation of facts, is key to public health communication, and Hoffman collaborates often with the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, whose “Hollywood, Health and Society” project has conducted research on everything from “Increases in calls to the CDC National STD and AIDS hotline following AIDS-related episodes in a soap opera” to “The Impact of Food and Nutrition Messages on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” It also provides consultants to shows from “Breaking Bad” to “Black-ish,” and a Lear Center rep spoke in Hoffman’s class.

Hoffman was recently lead author on a published overview of current research evidence on the media and health, which found that “health storylines on fictional television influence viewers.”...

Pitt Public Health was the leader in developing the Salk vaccine for polio, she points out. Public health education and media literacy can be a sort of vaccination against misinformation, she says: “We often talk about it as inoculation. Misinformation is not going away. How can we make people less susceptible to it?”"