Why try to get your public health message into fictional story lines? People learn from TV," says Marty Kaplan, the director of the Norman Lear Center. "Even if they know it is fiction, even if they know if writers can make stuff up, especially in the realm of medicine and public health, if a doctor says something to a patient, people tend to think that someone has checked that, that it’s true,” Kaplan says.
Kaplan’s group works to make sure that at least some of what comes out of doctors' mouths is real, or at least real-ish. Hollywood Health & Society has worked with nearly 100 TV shows -- everything from "Mad Men" to "Desperate Housewives" to "Dr. Vegas" and "The Bold and the Beautiful." The Center has access to the megaphone that is Hollywood.
And that’s appealing to The California Endowment, which gave the $500,000 grant. Hollywood Health & Society will reach out to TV writers and editors says Daniel Zingale, Senior V.P. of Healthy California at The California Endowment. “They’ll be giving them content, storylines, information, so that people watching those programs will learn about Obamacare and useful information about how to get enrolled.”...
Source: Adrienne Hill at the Healthcare Marketplace.
