Health Narratives in Entertainment
Can Influence Mindsets and Policy
Because entertainment narratives can affect how audiences understand the causes of health disparities and how to address them, entertainment could play a key role in shifting mindsets toward equity, justice and systemic change – and shift public support toward policies and practices that support them.

Read findings about health narratives in movies and TV, and the mindsets shaping how audiences receive them, in new studies by the Lear Center’s Media Impact Project.
"Don't judge me on if I was neutral, but if I was fair."
NBC/MSNBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff won a Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in TV Political Journalism in 2019 for his harrowing reporting on the Trump administration’s separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border. He joined USC Annenberg professor Roberto Suro for a conversation about his personal and professional challenges covering the story.

The Russian Connection
At an event hosted by Lyn and Norman Lear, Lear Center director Marty Kaplan asked veteran investigative journalist Craig Unger (top left) and his key source, former KGB major Yuri Shvets (top right), about questions raised by Unger’s new book, American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery.

Black Mothers Matter
Why are America’s Black mothers dying from complications related to pregnancy at two to three times the rate of white, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islander women? And how are storytellers depicting the answers? Watch this frank discussion of the Black birth experience hosted by the Lear Center’s Hollywood, Health & Society and featuring TV writers/producers Erika Green Swafford (New Amsterdam); Esa Lewis and Helen Krieger (#blackAF); Dr. Joia Crear-Perry (OB-GYN, National Birth Equity Collaborative); Kay Matthews (Shades of Blue Project); and moderated by pubic radio journalist Priska Neely (Gulf States Newsroom).

Vaping study makes a difference
L.A.’s City Attorney has secured a $1.2 million penalty against the Kandypens vaping company for marketing its products to kids through music videos and social media. The court order was bolstered by a content analysis of e-cigarette product placement in music videos conducted by Lear Center research director Erica Rosenthal, in a project led by USC Keck professor Jon-Patrick Allem.

READ more about the study here and here.
Pop Culture for UK Social Change
In a special report from Unbound Philanthropy, an international roster of researchers, innovators, funders and influencers – including Lear Center managing director Johanna Blakley and Hollywood, Health & Society director Kate Folb – weigh in on the potential of narratives in film, TV and video games to catalyze a pro-social culture shift in the UK.