ABSTRACT

Mass media health campaigns have gradually increased in number, rising to a flurry of activity in the 1990s, Unfortunately for communication scholars, most of these campaigns were and still are privately funded, and little or no evaluative research typically is presented to the public. A seminal spark for research in this arena was a national conference held at the Annenberg Center for Health Sciences in Rancho Mirage, California. The conference explored how the mass media could be used more effectively to improve public health. Believing that the informationdissemination function was key to improving public health, the conference organizers focused discussions on improving health campaigns and adding health information into news and entertainment programming. The conference included experts in journalism, advertising, entertainment, communication science, public policy, medical science, and public health who approached the subject from the

standpoint of practitioners, academic scholars, members of government agencies, and advocacy groups. Sponsors of the conference included federal agencies such as the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office for Substance Abuse Prevention, and National Cancer Institute.