"It was the biggest media barrage yet of our school’s researchers, and we hope to see more of it in the future," said Kevin Myron, assistant director of the Office of Communications at HSPH. "My pager was going off continually with calls from the media."

The coverage was sparked by the publication of two papers in the August 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls and Associated Substance Use, Unhealthy Weight Control, Sexual Risk Behavior, Pregnancy, and Suicidality" and "Violence in E-Rated Video Games."

Jay Silverman, assistant professor in the Department of Health and Social Behavior and director of Violence Prevention Programs at the Division of Public Health Practice, was lead author of the dating violence paper. Kimberly Thompson, assistant professor of risk analysis and decision science in the Department of Health Policy and Management, and Kevin Haninger, doctoral student in the university-wide Program in Health Policy, wrote the video games study.

In the first two weeks following publication of the papers, Myron tracked appearances of the studies in more than three dozen major media outlets.

On the morning of the papers’ publication, Thompson appeared on CBS’s "The Early Show" and Haninger spoke on the "Today" show. Diane Sawyer of "Good Morning America" interviewed Silverman.

The New York Times picked up both studies, placing Silverman’s on its front page and Thompson’s in its "Health and Fitness" section. The wire services Associated Press and Reuters and CNN also reported on the studies.

US News & World Report and affiliates of National Public Radio interviewed both researchers; NPR’s "Morning Edition" featured Silverman’s paper. Local television stations in the US and Canada ran parts of a video news release of Thompson’s paper made by JAMA’s Dr. Barry Kaufman.

And the coverage has not ended. Silverman is quoted in this week’s Time magazine in an article entitled, "When Dating is Dangerous."

Thompson, a veteran of media coverage who teaches risk communication at the school, has released four papers in the past two years that have attracted news outlets. She said she was prepared for the latest onslaught, making a list of the key points that she and Haninger would emphasize and providing highlights of the study on a web site. She said it is important to understand the level of detail the reporter wants and make explanations easily understood.

Thompson believes that working with the media is worth the drain on her schedule. "Getting public health messages out into the press is the key to reaching the public and putting our research into practice," she said. "If what we do never gets beyond the walls of the school, the work is not as powerful."

Silverman did not fully anticipate the tremendous attention his paper received. He spoke to so many reporters on July 31 that by the end of the day, he had lost his voice, hours before he was to appear on "Good Morning America."

Despite the intense demand of the media, Silverman saw the experience as a positive one. "Part of the mission of public health is to use our work to affect changes in public opinion or public policy," said Silverman. "In the United States in particular, the media can be a powerful agent of change."

Silverman and Thompson were not the only HSPH faculty members who have caught the attention of the media recently. The day before Silverman and Thompson appeared on the network news programs, Nutrition Department Chair Walter Willett was on the "Today" show talking about his new book. Andrew Spielman, professor of tropical public health in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, has also been popping up frequently in the news with a new book, Mosquito: A Natural History of Man’s Most Persistent and Deadly Foe.