Other Center Initiatives

The Center developed three graduate courses to help prepare health professionals to effectively utilize communication strategies. These courses have been offered through the School’s Department of Health and Social Behavior and the Department of Nutrition. Center staff also participate as guest lecturers in other classes and seminars throughout the School.

The Harvard Journalism Fellowship for Advanced Studies in Public Health was the first mid-career fellowship in the country to target the specific needs of print and broadcast journalists who cover health and medicine on a regular basis. The Fellowship was started to help journalists gain knowledge in issues pertinent to public health, enabling them to spend an academic year at the School pursuing academic interests and self-designated projects. Twenty-three journalists from the United States, Russia, Japan, and India have been fellows at the Center, and ten fellows have published books based on the research they conducted at Harvard. The highly acclaimed books resulting from the fellowship program include Philip Hilts’Smokescreen--The Truth Behind the Tobacco Industry Cover-up; Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance; Linda Villarosa’s Body & Soul: The Black Woman’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being; Nick Tate’s The Sick Building Syndrome: How Indoor Air Pollution is Poisoning Your Life--And What You Can Do; and Vic Cohn’s News & Numbers. 

The Harvard Health Forum was a series of working luncheons on health topics for magazine writers and editors in New York City. Moderated by Jane Brody, personal health columnist of The New York Times, the series resulted in sharply increased attention to important health topics, and led to highly productive ongoing relationships between journalists, Harvard faculty, and Center staff.

The Massachusetts Working Luncheons on Youth Violence Prevention were co-sponsored by the Center for Health Communication and [then] Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. These meetings brought together senior officials from government, academic experts, leaders from the business and philanthropic communities, representatives of community and religious groups, and members of the news media. The series aimed to deepen understanding of violence and ways to prevent it, and to contribute to the development and implementation of effective public policies. A final report of the series, No Time to Lose: A Comprehensive Action Plan to Prevent Youth Violence, includes recommendations for youth violence prevention strategies that could be implemented in Massachusetts, as well as edited transcripts of all the sessions.

Martha’s Vineyard Demonstration Project: In collaboration with the leadership of the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Harvard designed a demonstration project to determine whether a summer-long, community-saturation awareness campaign could move the issue of drinking and driving and the designated driver to the top of the public agenda. Harvard played a lead role in forming a community coalition involving the island’s law enforcement, the Chamber of Commerce, Boards of Selectmen, restaurants, and bars. The project’s strategy included blanketing the island with posters, table cards, and other materials proclaiming "The Designated Driver is the Life of the Party"; radio PSAs featuring vacationing celebrities; and strong editorials and front-page stories in The Vineyard Gazette. The goal of the Vineyard project was to highlight the issue of drinking and driving to such an extent that it would stimulate the formation of a local task force to institutionalize a commitment to the designated driver campaign. This objective was achieved by the formation of a non-profit, charitable corporation and a task force headed by the Sheriff. In collaboration with the National Commission Against Drunk Driving, the Harvard Alcohol Project published a practical guidebook, based in part on the Vineyard experience, to advise communities on how to implement local designated driver campaigns. More than 2,000 copies of the guidebook were distributed, including 1,500 in response to specific requests.

The Harvard Nutrition and Fitness Project was a research-based mass media project designed to explore ways to positively influence the dietary and exercise habits of American children in order to help prevent lifestyle-related diseases. The project collaborated with Nickelodeon Cable Television and CBS Television to incorporate nutrition and fitness messages into children’s programming and to air PSAs on nutrition and fitness during children’s shows. In March 1991 the project sponsored a national conference on the Nutrition and Fitness of Children and Youth, chaired by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Julius B. Richmond, that resulted in a book, Child Health, Nutrition and Physical Activity. The project also produced a white paper characterizing the effects of different behavioral risk factors on pregnancy outcomes.

Launched in 1991, the Harvard Domestic Violence Project aimed to deepen public understanding of family violence and ways to prevent it; raise family violence issues to higher visibility and higher priority on the public agenda; and contribute to the development and implementation of effective public policies. The initiative included a series of working luncheons co-sponsored by then Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger and conducted in cooperation with the Massachusetts Coalition of Battered Women Service Groups. Each of the nine sessions brought together 60 to 80 legislators, victims’ advocates, judges, police chiefs, and state commissioners, as well as representatives of the media. The luncheon series had a direct impact on statewide policy; one session helped prompt Governor Weld to relax the conditions under which battered women who have killed their abusers may seek clemency. The Report on Domestic Violence: A Commitment to Action, was the culmination of the nine sessions and included policy recommendations that arose out of those meetings. Many of these recommendations were subsequently adopted by the Governor’s Domestic Violence Commission.

Operation Breakthrough was a mass communication program that aimed to encourage people to intervene on behalf of a young person with a known alcohol problem. The initiative also was designed to teach intervention skills and develop a social climate that sees interpersonal interventions as highly valued acts. The project included working with broadcast and print journalists at leading news organizations to prepare feature stories on teen interventions, and working with television producers and writers to create prime-time episodes showing the benefits of proper intervention techniques. In addition, Operation Breakthrough developed a highly regarded pamphlet advising teens on how to intervene to obtain help for a friend who is abusing alcohol and other drugs. More than 600,000 copies of the pamphlet have been distributed nationwide by the National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information, primarily in response to individual requests.

In 1994, the Center conducted a study on corporate-sponsored media campaigns implemented by local television stations across the country. Community affairs directors at over 100 television stations nationwide were surveyed and interviewed on their experiences and interest in these campaigns. The study found that local stations are increasingly forming partnerships with the local business community and nonprofit organizations to develop such campaigns to serve their communities. The published report, Corporate-Sponsored Media Campaigns: New Opportunities for Public Health, has been widely distributed to local television stations, corporations, non-profit organizations, and community groups across the country.

Conferences: The Center for Health Communication has sponsored two major conferences on mass media. In October 1993, The Annenberg Washington Program and the Center convened a group of scholars, journalists, activists, and public officials to consider how mass communication: 1) shapes society’s ability to deal with problems; 2) gets issues on the public and governmental agenda; 3) reinforces or alters social norms and attitudes; and 4) brings about individual behavioral change. Conference participants also explored ways to bring these insights to bear on particular efforts underway to address the problem of violence in society. For two days, the participants reviewed scholarly findings, reflected on their own professional experiences concerning AIDS, smoking, and drinking and driving, and considered how the power of mass communication could be marshaled to respond effectively to the problem of violence. The report on the conference, Violence, Public Health, and the Media, is based on those deliberations. This unique conference was funded by The Annenberg Washington Program, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The second conference concerned one of the most extensively studied and heavily criticized areas of the press: its coverage of science and technology. Considerable discussion and research have focused on the often stormy relationship between scientists and the media and on the quality of science journalism. In 1995 the Center sponsored a three-day national invitational conference to: 1) explore some of the factors that determine whether, when, and to what extent science coverage influences policy, behavior, and the conduct of science; 2) to elucidate some of the processes that create these influences; and 3) to identify correctable problems for which steps could be taken. The conference was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Report of the Conference on "Science, Technology, and the News Media" summarizes the conference proceedings. 

For more information about the Center for Health Communication, please contact:

Center for Health Communication 
Harvard School of Public Health
677 Huntington Avenue 
Boston, MA 02115 
Phone: 617-432-1038 
Fax: 617-731-8184 
E-mail: chc@hsph.harvard.edu

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