Grey’s Anatomy – Not Just A Pretty Face.
September 22, 2008 by Liz Lewis
Filed under Exposed!, Health, Media, Prevention
If you think that Grey’s Anatomy is all about McDreamy, McSteamy, and the rest of the gang, think again. Turns out that along with a healthy dose of ‘pretty faces’ we are also being subjected to and absorbing health awareness messages.
The degree to which we absorb these messages was measured recently by researchers from the Kaiser Family Foundation. They met with Grey’s Anatomy writers and staff and created a storyline that focused on a pregnant HIV-positive woman who initially demands an abortion, fearing she will pass the virus that causes AIDS to her child. During this episode, she finds out that with proper treatment she has a 98 percent chance of delivering a HIV-free baby.
To find out if this message got through, the researchers surveyed a group of randomly selected regular Grey’s Anatomy watchers. These viewers were questioned, testing their knowledge and attitudes about HIV-positive women giving birth prior to seeing the episode, one week after, and again, six weeks after the episode was screened.
Here’s one of the questions they were asked…
“As far as you know, if a woman who is HIV positive becomes pregnant and receives the proper treatment, what is the chance that she will give birth to a healthy baby, not infected with HIV?
(The answer? There is a more than 90 percent chance of having a healthy baby with the right treatment.)
The results…
- 53 percent knew the correct answer a week before the episode was aired.
- 76 percent knew the correct answer a week after the show aired.
- 63 percent still knew the correct answer six weeks after the program aired.
Victoria Rideout, led researcher and study author concludes “This study shows the enormous potential for entertainment television to serve as a health educator… for better or worse, viewers do absorb the health information they see on TV, so it’s important for these shows to get it right.”
So we get pretty faces and knowledge too. What more could we ask for?
(source)
I have to admit that while I knew there were drugs an HIV-positive pregnant woman can take, I was surprised when I saw the episode that there’s such a high change to not pass it on to the baby. But I think part of the problem is that it’s television – people aren’t going to believe it’s real just because they say it on GA. I mean, this is the show that gave us the two-womb twins and Meredith coming back to life (with no brain damage) after being effectively frozen and dead for hours.
Yeah, I know what you mean. There’s so much far fetched on the show that it’s hard to believe that there is real real stuff in their somewhere….
Some of it IS far-fetched, but these things do happen in real life, even though they are not that common. Now, I have another reason to start watching GA.