by Nedra Weinreich | Nov 6, 2007 | Blog, Entertainment, Policy
My Washington correspondent reports that on Monday evening, the final conference report of the Labor-HHS bill was filed. She said:
I’ve been told that the conferees (the House-Senate negotiators) dropped the Ryan amendment – leaving funding for CDC’s Entertainment Education program intact. We’re pretty excited.
The House is scheduled to approve the bill on Tuesday with the Senate following suit later this week. Then the bill will be sent to the President. He is expected to veto the bill (unrelated to our issue) because it spends more money than he’d like. Then the House and Senate will have to start all over again on the same bill.
That said… I think we can declare victory. I don’t think Rep. Ryan or Sen. Coburn will try to offer their amendments on a future Labor-HHS bill this year.
Yippee! She also felt that the pressure from the public health community was invaluable. So kudos to all of you who emailed, called or faxed to try to save entertainment education!
Photo Credit: paşanın yeri
Technorati Tags: cdc, hhs, senate, house, public health, entertainment education
by Nedra Weinreich | Nov 5, 2007 | Blog, Entertainment
Outside of LA or New York, the writers’ strike that starts today is unlikely to affect you much (at least until the studios run out of original content they already have in the can). But here in this company town, it’s big news. Not only will writers and producers be affected, but the rest of the production staff — including gaffers, key grips and best boys (and other positions that I have no clue what they do) — will be out of work if production is put on hold.
In a nutshell, the Writers Guild of America (WGA), which represents the people who write for television and movies, is striking primarily over writers not receiving fair residuals for reuse of their work on DVD or on the internet. (Am I wrong to think that should be “Writers’ Guild”? Wouldn’t you think the writers would know the correct punctuation?) As it currently stands, writers now get only 0.3 percent of DVD profits, and receive nothing for online distribution of their shows, such as through the network websites.
What does the strike mean for us social marketers who do outreach to Hollywood writers to promote our issues? It’s not entirely clear yet, but one big change will be an increased emphasis from the networks on reality shows. Another is that web-based entertainment will likely come to the fore as bored viewers seek out new programming. Branching out and learning how to work with new media producers is imperative in any case, strike or no strike.
Lucky for the writers, the strike comes at the beginning of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and those who have always wanted to write the Great American Novel can come home from the picket line and join the over 100,000 people working to finish their 50,000-word novel by the end of the month.
Hopefully when they come back to work, there will still be people left who want to watch their shows.
Photo Credit: Neville_S
UPDATE: Here is a picture my son took of the strikers as we drove by CBS earlier today (not as many people there as I would have expected):
Photo Credit: A. Weinreich
Technorati Tags: wga, writers, strike
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 27, 2007 | Blog, Entertainment, Policy
A new dispatch from my very own unnamed Deep Throat in DC:
On Tuesday, the Senate approved its Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008; the bill preserves funding for the CDC’s Entertainment Education program (background here). This victory is due to the staunch support for the program shown by the public health community. Now, our attention turns to the House-Senate conference committee that will negotiate a final bill to send to the President. We need to urge the conference committee to remove the Ryan amendment previously approved by the House, which would eliminate funding for CDC’s Entertainment Education program. We believe the conference committee will wrap up its work and send a bill to the President by November 1st.
We can mobilize one more time to make sure that the funding remains in the final bill. We’ve already seen that by showing our support for the effectiveness and importance of the EE approach, we were able to convince those in the Senate that this funding is not a “boondoggle.” I could see that individuals from the House and Senate visited my blog to read what had been written about the amendment. Let’s make sure that they continue to feel the pressure. We only need to persuade four people this time.
At this point, sending a fax will be most effective. Copy and personalize the suggested letter below, sign and date it, and send one copy to the House and one to the Senate. Here are the fax numbers and letter:
Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Specter – (202) 224-2100
Chairman Obey and Ranking Member Walsh – (202) 225-9476
Date
Chairman Tom Harkin
Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies
Washington, D.C. 20510
Ranking Member Arlen Specter
Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies
Washington, D.C. 20510
Chairman David Obey
House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies
Washington, D.C. 20515
Ranking Member James Walsh
House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Chairmen and Ranking Members:
As the House and Senate conference the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008, I am writing to share my support for the CDC’s Entertainment Education Program. This is an important public health tool which utilizes the power of popular mass media to educate Americans about healthy behaviors.
During House consideration of the Labor-HHS bill, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) successfully offered an amendment to eliminate funding for the program. I urge you to remove this amendment as you develop the conference report.
The CDC’s Entertainment Education Program fosters the use of factual health information in television shows and promotes the incorporation of important and timely public health messages into television programming. Funding for this program allows the CDC to reach out to television writers with written materials and experts on a wide range of public health issues, to respond to requests from television writers, producers, and researchers, and to ultimately connect them with experts who can provide factual information.
According to the 2005 HealthStyles (Porter Novelli) study, nearly three out of 10 (28%) regular television viewers took one or more actions as a result of a television health storyline, such as telling someone about the health topic, calling a hotline or visiting a clinic. Under the guidance of the CDC’s Entertainment Education Program, more than 400 television episodes contained public health information, including more than 82 major storylines.
Please support effective approaches to improve public health – remove the Ryan amendment during conference consideration of the Labor-HHS bill. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Please fax your letter by October 31st. I’ll keep you informed of any news I learn. Thanks for your support!
Photo Credit: Daniel Berger
Technorati Tags: cdc, congress, hhs, bill, public health, entertainment education
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 19, 2007 | Blog, Entertainment, Policy
Thanks to the efforts of many people, Senator Coburn removed the provision to eliminate funding for the CDC’s Entertainment Education program from his proposed amendment before it even made it to the floor for a vote (here’s the background if you are just joining the story now). High fives all around!
So, as it stands now, the Senate version of the HHS appropriations bill leaves the funding intact, while the House version has it eliminated. From my limited policy knowledge, I believe the next step will be for the House and Senate to reconcile the two versions of the bill in conference. I will let you know when and how we can try to influence that process when the time comes.
We made a difference! (And, no, I don’t receive any funding myself from this program. It’s the principle of the thing.)
Technorati Tags: cdc, hhs, senate, coburn, social marketing, hollywood, public health
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 18, 2007 | Blog, Entertainment, Policy
Thanks to my well-placed source on the ground in Washington, here is a brief update on the status of the entertainment education funding:
The Senate began consideration of the Labor-HHS bill yesterday and continues today (and possibly tomorrow). Sen. Coburn filed his amendment to eliminate funding for the Entertainment Education program, signaling his intention to offer it at some point during debate on the bill. We do not have a time frame for when Coburn will formally offer the amendment and when the Senate will debate it.
In his column today praising Senator Coburn’s efforts to eliminate pork from the budget (a worthy goal, but misguided in this case), Bob Novak of the Washington Post mentions the “$1.7 million added to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention budget to fund a Hollywood liaison to advise doctor dramas.” This vastly oversimplifies the purpose of the program, and ignores the public health impact that results from collaborating with the entertainment industry to achieve the CDC’s health behavior change goals. If anything, it’s the anti-pork (literally and figuratively).
I just called both my Senators to urge them to oppose Senator Coburn’s pending amendment. If you feel as strongly about defending the value of the entertainment education approach as I do, I hope you will call or email your Senators today as well. I think we especially need people from outside of California to contact your Senators, because most of the efforts so far have been centered in L.A.
To make it even easier for you, here are a couple of sentences you can use as-is or adapt for when you call:
Hi, I’m calling to urge Senator ____ to oppose Senator Coburn’s amendment to the Labor/HHS appropriations bill that would eliminate funding for the CDC’s entertainment education program. This is an effective and cost-efficient public health tool that has been proven to increase health knowledge and healthy behaviors among television viewers. Thank you.
Two minutes per phone call, and we can make this happen. We’ve got the power.
Photo Credit: sazztastical
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 15, 2007 | Blog, Entertainment, Policy
I have been intending to write about this for some time, and with the US Senate about to open up debate on the appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services this week, the time must be now.
Back in July, when the House of Representatives was voting on the HHS Appropriations bill, Congressman Ryan of Wisconsin successfully passed an amendment on a voice vote that took out the line item for the CDC’s entertainment education project (currently housed at USC as Hollywood, Health and Society). This is a well-known, successful program that works with television writers and other entertainment industry professionals to ensure that health issues are depicted accurately and to work towards inclusion of health content into shows to promote healthy behaviors on the part of the audience. I have written about the effectiveness of the entertainment education approach many times before.
Congressman Ryan lumped this program in with other instances of what he considers wasteful spending by the CDC and tarred it with a very broad brush. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of his remarks:
Mr. Chairman, there is a recent troubling report entitled “CDC Off Center,” which was produced under the direction of Senator Coburn with a report in the Senate Government Affairs Committee. Instead of using its resources to fight life-threatening diseases like HIV/AIDS and cancer, the CDC has instead spent money on needless luxury items and nongovernment functions.
For example, the CDC’s Office of Health and Safety recently provided its employees with a new, extravagant fitness center that includes such items as rotating pastel “mood” lights, zero-gravity chairs, and $30,000 dry-heat saunas. The CDC has also spent over $1.7 million on a “Hollywood liaison” to advise TV shows like “E.R.” and “House” on medical information included in their programming, clearly an expense that should have been covered by the successful for-profit television shows, not by our hard-earned tax dollars. They also further squandered taxpayer dollars in an office intended to help improve employee morale…
In a time when we are facing increasing risk of bioterrorism and disease, these are hardly the best use of taxpayer dollars. My amendment simply would ensure that the CDC would not be able to spend any more Federal funding on these three boondoggles described above. And it is my hope that we can get the CDC focused on doing its job, which is very important and they do a good job on that, and not on these kinds of boondoggles.
With that one sentence about the “Hollywood liaison,” boom, out went that program. I’m not going to comment on the rest of the CDC “boondoggles” because I don’t know enough about them. I do know that entertainment education is not a boondoggle, but a very effective public health activity.
Congressman Ryan’s chief objection seems to be that those rich Hollywood types should pay for their own darn consultants if they want to be medically accurate. The fact is, TV writers and producers are in the business of telling stories and entertaining people. There aren’t many producers out there like Neal Baer who put a premium on incorporating health education while telling a good story. Many need to be convinced, and then handed the information on a silver platter. If programs like Hollywood Health and Society (HHS) and others like it weren’t doing constant outreach to the entertainment industry, much more inaccurate information would be getting out to the public, which might then be erroneously acted upon.
And that doesn’t take into account that this type of outreach is much more cost-effective than producing television ads and purchasing time to run them. Some examples of the cost savings can be found by looking at the shows HHS has consulted on (thank you to my anonymous well-placed contacts who provided me with this information):
- Show: ER
Topic: adolescent obesity and related topics
Length: approx. 7 minutes
Audience: 24.8 million
If purchased time using ad rate: $4,818,324
Evaluation results:
• Viewers reported more healthy behaviors after seeing the storyline, i.e. exercising and eating healthy (AOR 1.65, p< .01>• Viewers had more knowledge of 5 A Day compared with non-viewers (AOR 1.05, p< .05>• Men had the greatest and most significant gains in knowledge (AOR 1.25, p< .01>
- Show: 24
Topic: Bioterrorism/major disease outbreak
Length: approx. 20 minutes
Audience: 11.4 million
Cost if purchased time using ad rate: $12,360,000
Evaluation results:
• Viewers who saw one or more of the 5 storyline episodes had increased knowledge about susceptibility to a bioterrorism attack, how infection spreads, public health response, and steps to take in a bioterrorism emergency.
• Viewers were also significantly influenced in their intention to follow directions from authorities.
Over the past five years, the total time that television shows aired public health information concerning CDC topics was approximately 545 min., reaching 586 million viewers. The total cost if they had purchased ad time on those shows would have been $72,442,644. For the number of people they reached, and the effectiveness of the content, I’d say the program was a bargain at $1.7 million.
If you agree that the CDC should continue to promote public health through the very effective entertainment education approach, please contact your Senators to express your support for retaining this funding. You can find your Senators’ email and fax numbers here. You can adapt this sample letter:
Date
Senator _______
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator _______:
I am writing to share my support for the CDC’s Entertainment Education Program, an important public health tool which utilizes the power of popular mass media to educate Americans about healthy behaviors. I urge you to oppose any attempts to eliminate funding for the program when the Senate considers the Labor-HHS Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008.
The CDC’s Entertainment Education Program fosters the use of factual health information in television shows and promotes the incorporation of important and timely public health messages into television programming. Funding for this program allows the CDC to reach out to television writers with written materials and experts on a wide range of public health issues, to respond to requests from television writers, producers, and researchers, and to ultimately connect them with experts who can provide factual information. Rather than serving in lieu of paid consultants to the shows, the program ensures accurate depictions of health issues even when no such effort would have been made otherwise on the part of the entertainment professionals.
During House consideration of the Labor-HHS bill, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) successfully offered an amendment to eliminate funding for the program. I urge you to oppose any similar effort in the Senate.
According to the 2005 HealthStyles (Porter Novelli) study, nearly six out of 10 (58%) regular television viewers report learning something about a disease or how to prevent it from a daytime or primetime drama. More importantly, nearly three out of 10 (28%) regular viewers took one or more actions as a result of a television health storyline, such as telling someone about the health topic, calling a hotline or visiting a clinic.
Under the guidance of the CDC’s Entertainment Education Program:
• More than 400 television episodes contained public health information, including more than 82 major storylines
• 11 shows ran some combination of informational PSAs, info spots, and toll free numbers
• 28 storylines were evaluated for effect on viewing audiences
• More than 200 links to public health information were provided to show websites for their viewers
The entertainment education approach works. Up to 20 million viewers may watch a single T.V. show, and they act on the health information they receive. It would be a public health tragedy for this highly successful program to lose its funding.
Sincerely,
Please pass this information along to other entertainment education professionals and social marketers you know so that the entire field is not dismissed offhandedly as a “boondoggle.” The House wasn’t paying attention. Let’s make sure that the Senate is.
Technorati Tags: CDC, entertainment education, senate, HHS, social marketing
Nedra helps nonprofits and public agencies create positive change on health and social issues through social marketing and transmedia storytelling strategies at Weinreich Communications since founding the company in 1995. She helps organizations make a difference for the populations they serve by strategically designing programs that draw on state-of-the-art behavior change techniques, digital media approaches and the power of stories. 
