The television medical drama Grey's Anatomy apparently has more to offer than Patrick Dempsey's rakish smile and a good cry. A new survey reports watching the show also may increase a viewer's health smarts.
Research released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates many people who tune in to prime time's top-rated shows remember health messages in episodes.
In one survey, Kaiser experts worked with Grey's Anatomy scriptwriters to plant health information in an episode that aired in May.
The story line included an HIV-positive woman and her husband who learn she is pregnant. The woman, who is distraught and blames a broken condom, is told by her doctor that with proper treatment, her baby has a 98% chance of being born healthy and not contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Three random telephone surveys of about 1,500 regular viewers were conducted one week before the show aired, one week after it aired and again six weeks later. The objective was to measure the impact of the message about mother-to-child HIV transmission, says Victoria Rideout, vice president and director of Kaiser's Program for the Study of Media and Health.
Before watching the episode, 15% of viewers were aware that with proper treatment, an HIV mother's baby has a 98% chance of being born healthy. One week after the show, 61% were aware of that information. Six weeks later, 45% remembered the information correctly.
"I was astounded" by the number of viewers who "picked up on factual health info about HIV embedded in the show, and that they remembered it weeks later," Rideout says.
A second study, also released Tuesday by Kaiser and the University of Southern California's Annenberg Norman Lear Center, indicates that health content is prevalent on prime-time TV. An analysis of three seasons (2004-2006) of top-10 shows reported nearly six out of 10 episodes had at least one health-related story line.
"People are very hungry for information about health. Entertainment media who embed correct health information are doing a societal good," says Linda Rosenstock, dean of the UCLA School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study.
A lot of inaccurate health messages are on television, says Sandra de Castro Buffington of Hollywood, Health & Society, an Annenberg program that provides health information to entertainment writers and producers.
However, done responsibly, embedding accurate health content in entertainment television could have a major public health impact, says Jay Bernhardt of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It could help change behaviors about health," he says.
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