What are we told? A news media monitoring model for public health and the case of vaccines.

Abstract

How can we, the public health community, together with national and international health authorities make sure effective health education messages reach the general population? We propose a news media monitoring model for public health and a set of indicators that can be used to quantitatively assess health education and communication messages delivered through news media. We piloted it to the case of vaccines on 1-year issues ( n = 366) of the most read Italian newspaper. As done in marketing strategies, media monitoring is a valuable tool to inform health promotion interventions and communication strategies. Media play a crucial role in channelling health-related information: they are powerful tools to deliver health education and promote disease prevention. However, if misused or exploited, they can negatively influence general population’s health attitudes and behaviours. In previous work we reported on the detrimental impact that messages delivered through news media had on vaccine uptake in the last influenza season in Italy.1 Despite being among the most effective primary prevention tools ever invented, vaccines are ‘victims of their own success’ and have recently lost public confidence. The World Health Organization has recently warned against the growing phenomenon of the ‘vaccine hesitancy’ identifying effective communication as key tool to dispel fears, address concerns and promote acceptance of vaccination.2 How can we—the public health community—together with national and international health authorities make sure effective health education messages reach the general population? As it has recently been reported by experts ‘for any communication approach to …