Health Content in Entertainment Television

Most viewers who tune in each night to television's top-rated sitcoms and dramas do so because they want to be entertained, but according to two new studies released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation, many of them are being educated about important health issues at the same time. In order to document how well viewers learn health information from entertainment television, the Foundation worked with writers at Grey's Anatomy to embed a health message in an episode, and then surveyed viewers on the topic before and after the episode aired. The storyline involved an HIV positive pregnant woman who learns that with the proper treatment, she has a 98% chance of having a healthy baby. The study found that the audience's awareness of this information increased by 46 percentage points (from 15% to 61%), a four-fold increase among all viewers. This translates to more than eight million people learning correct information about mother-to-child HIV transmission rates from watching the episode. The study, titled Television as a Health Educator: A Case Study of Grey's Anatomy included three national random-digit-dial telephone surveys of regular viewers of the show, conducted one week before, one week after, and ­ to test retention of the information ­ six weeks after the target episode aired. After six weeks, 45% of the episode's viewers correctly responded about the chances of mother-to-child HIV transmission - down from the high of 61%, but still three times higher than before the episode aired.

Another study released today by the Foundation and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center's Hollywood, Health & Society indicates that health content is prevalent on popular prime time television. An analysis of three seasons (2004-2006) of top-ten-rated prime time scripted shows reveals that six out of ten episodes (59%) had at least one health storyline, and that most of those storylines provided a strong (32%) or moderate (29%) level of educational content. The typical episode in the analysis averaged about one and one half health storylines, indicating that millions of television viewers are regularly exposed to health content.