COVID vaccine: to jab or not to jab
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination has been hailed as the light at the end of the tunnel. However, even though the UK is one of the top countries in the world for the number of vaccinations doses administered, there is mistrust and suspicion about the safety of the vaccine and the intentions…
Health & Wellness: making a drama out of public health
Helping writers provide accurate health information in TV medical dramas delivers entertainment and added benefits of increased health (medical) awareness & wellness to the population. Stephen McGann’s essay (Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine) describes the steps taken by the writers, production team and actors of TV medical drama, Call the Midwife, to ensure medical accuracy and authenticity. Though set in the 1950s, he demonstrates that the series has raised health awareness in populations (health promotion): in the UK (diphtheria) and in Bangladesh, by providing advice on how to depict authentic birth scenes and show safe maternal health practices.
The ethics of tobacco packaging
In the week of World NO Tobacco Day (31st May 2014) this blog addresses tobacco packaging: the use of standardized packaging & pictorial health warnings for cigarettes to further reduce consumption and address the world's leading agent of death...tobacco.
No strings attached: public health messages from puppets!
Image:Loren Javier Father Christmas & wife puppets Happy Christmas! One intriguing way of getting health messages across to communities who are illiterate and whose spoken language may not even have words to describe the medical concept, is to entertain them. Travelling theatre groups in Africa sing or act out AIDs prevention…
Getting kids to eat healthy- mission impossible?
There’s a challenge! How to do it? Stealth, education, marketing, example. Which do you choose? Should we hide fruit and vegetables in meals so children eat them without realising as suggested in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently or use marketing to improve the image of healthy food, employing packaging and advergames? Or in fact…