Social Science & Medicine
      Volume 64, Issue 9,  Pages 1789-1976 (May 2007)

I've been waiting three years to see this article...

dr


Telling stories: News media, health literacy and public policy in Canada
Michael Hayesa, , , Ian E. Rossb, , Mike Gasherc, , Donald Gutsteinb, ,
James R. Dunnd, e,  and Robert A. Hackettb,

aFaculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
V5A 1S6
bSchool of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A
1S6
cDepartment of Journalism, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke Street
West, Montreal, PQ, Canada H4B 1R6
dInner City Health Research Unit, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, ON,
Canada M5B 1W8
eDepartment of Geography, University of Toronto, 30 Bond St., Toronto, ON,
Canada M5B 1W8

Available online 2 March 2007.

Abstract
Mass media are very influential in shaping discourses about health but few
studies have examined the extent to which newspaper coverage of such
stories reflect issues embedded in health policy documents. We estimate the
relative distribution of health stories using content analysis. Nine
meta-topics are used to sort stories across a range of major influences
shaping the health status of populations adapted from the document Toward a
Healthy Future (Second Report on the Health of Canadians (1999)) (TAHF). A
total of 4732 stories were analyzed from 13 Canadian daily newspapers (10
English, 3 French language) using a constructed week per quarter method.
Stories were sampled from each chosen newspaper for the years 1993, 1995,
1997 and 2001. 72% (n=3405) of stories in this analysis were from
English-language papers, 28% (n=1327) were from French-language papers.

Topics related to health care (dealing either with issues of service
provision and delivery or management and regulation) dominated newspaper
stories, accounting for 65% of all stories. Physical environment topics
accounted for about 13% of all stories, the socio-economic environment
about 6% of stories, personal health practices about 5% of stories, and
scientific advances in health research about 4% of stories. Other
influences upon health identified in TAHF were rarely mentioned. The
overall prominence of topics in newspapers is not consistent with the
relative importance assigned to health influences in TAHF. Canadian
newspapers rarely report on socio-economic influences frequently cited in
the research literature (and reflected in TAHF) as being most influential
in shaping population health

-------------------
Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask]


To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header --  to [log in to unmask]

SIGNOFF SDOH

DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU.

To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header.

SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname

To post a message to all 1200+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask]
Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant.

For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask]

To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask]
SET SDOH DIGEST

To view the SDOH archives, go to: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html