More Nonprofit Groups Tap Into TV to Help Promote Their Priorities

Last year, Sarah and Freddie, a married couple, visited Seattle Grace Hospital to get a pregnancy test. The test came back positive, but they were distraught — and Sarah asked to schedule an abortion. Sarah told her doctor she had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and did not want to pass it on to her baby. After doing some research, the doctor assured the couple that with good prenatal care, Sarah had a 98-percent chance of bearing a healthy baby, and she could get her “chance to be a mom.”

That scene from the ABC television show Grey’s Anatomy, which aired in May 2008, was more than just a touching drama — it was part of a study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, in Menlo Park, Calif., to gauge how much a television story line can increase viewer awareness.

Kaiser was interested in the answer because it works frequently with the television industry to get health messages inserted into TV plots. While Hollywood has never done anything before like the one-week blitzkrieg of programs about volunteering scheduled for October, it will not be the first time it has agreed to use its tremendous reach for a good cause.

Story Lines

Kaiser, for example, presented annual educational sessions about HIV/AIDS to writers and producers for CBS and the (now defunct) UPN network from 2003 to 2008. Those inspired about two dozen story lines about the disease on shows including the crime dramas Cold Case and CSI: NY, the comedy One on One, and the reality show America’s Next Top Model, says Tina Hoff, director of entertainment media partnerships at Kaiser.

The foundation considers prime-time television a critical partner in its efforts to educate the public about health, partly because it touches so many people, Ms. Hoff says.

“In some ways, it’s more effective than a traditional communications route,” she adds. Viewers can learn a tremendous amount from characters they relate to and trust.

The episode of Grey’s Anatomy on mother-to-child HIV transmission was designed to test that thesis. The foundation, which worked with the program’s director of medical research to select the topic, conducted telephone surveys of the show’s viewers both before and after the episode aired. The results: Before watching, 15 percent knew that a woman with HIV had more than a 90-percent chance of giving birth to a healthy baby. One week after the broadcast, that number rose to 61 percent. Six weeks later, the number had slipped to 45 percent, but that was still much higher than the pre-episode number.

Health Messages

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now tapping into popular culture as a way to promote its major priorities — improving global health and the country’s public schools. Last year, it provided almost $1.4-million to the Norman Lear Center of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication to work with producers and writers to accurately present global health topics on popular prime-time programs. The foundation has also been working directly with Viacom — the parent company of TV networks including BET, Comedy Central, MTV, and VH1 — to create education-themed programs or story lines in a five-year project called Get Schooled. In one of the project’s first major efforts, Viacom aired a 30-minute documentary, Get Schooled: You Have the Right, simultaneously on all of its networks on September 8.

The granddaddy of projects designed to influence behavior through entertainment was the Harvard Alcohol Project’s “designated driver” campaign.

The effort, which sought to reduce alcohol-related traffic deaths, enlisted ABC, CBS, and NBC in 1988.

Over four television seasons, they incorporated messages against drunk driving into the story lines of more than 160 prime-time TV episodes.

Harvard’s Center for Health Communication, which ran the alcohol project, cites surveys showing that by 1998, most adults who were drinkers had served as a designated driver or been driven home by one — and says the campaign helped sharply reduce the number of traffic deaths from 1988 to 1994.

Inspired by that success, many groups now try to influence TV story lines. Network executives say they try to be selective for fear of meddling with the creative process.

“We have to walk the fine line of entertaining and education,” says Brad Jamison, vice president of corporate initiatives for the Disney/ABC Television Group. “We don’t want people to learn about everything from an entertainment program.”