Beth Hoffman

Development and Pilot Test of an Edutainment-Based Curriculum for Addressing Misinformation in the Healthcare Setting Infectious disease-related mis- and disinformation (IDRMD) can impact health behavior. Motivational interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based approach for healthcare practitioners to engage with patie...

This curriculum is scalable and adaptable for other health professions and learning environments.
📎 Read the paper: doi.org/10.1080/1081...

#HealthCommunication #Misinformation #MedicalEducation #MotivationalInterviewing #Edutainment

Qualitative findings stood out: nearly half of participants said they would engage patients with more empathy, which is a core tenant of MI. Edutainment works because stories create emotional engagement, realism, and space to practice difficult conversations.

a man says " that is progress " in a snl ad Alt: a man says " that is progress " in a snl ad

The sessions were part of a clinical encounters course for physician assistant (PA) students. We saw significant improvements in:
✔️ Ability to identify misinformation
✔️ Comfort using MI with patients expressing misinformation

Patients increasingly bring infectious disease misinformation into clinical encounters, but many health trainees feel unprepared to respond. So, we piloted an approach using medical drama clips (ER, Chicago Med), didactic on misinformation + MI, and small-group script rewriting using MI principles.

🚨New paper out in @jhealthcomm.bsky.social! 🚨
We developed and pilot-tested an edutainment-based curriculum to help future healthcare providers address health misinformation using motivational interviewing (MI). A 🧵

Thanks for highlighting our study!

Our takeaway:
📺 Media is a powerful public health tool.
Closer collaboration between public health experts + content creators could help ensure CPR on screen is both common and correct.
And, so grateful to my coauthors and collaborators @pittdeptofmed.bsky.social and Public Health!

Why it matters:
Inaccurate portrayals may increase hesitation to act, even while CPR itself is normalized. This directly conflicts with @americanheart.bsky.social efforts to reduce barriers to layperson response.

TV also misrepresents who experiences OHCA.
👶 Over half of on-screen cardiac arrests happened to people under 40
🏠 Only ~20% occurred at home
(Reality: most OHCAs involve older adults and happen at home)
Also, just like in real-life most characters who got CPR were white and male

a man in a red jacket says i wasn t kissing her i was giving her cpr Alt: a man in a red jacket says i wasn t kissing her i was giving her cpr

The not-so-good news:
Only ~30% of depictions followed correct Hands-Only CPR steps.
Common inaccuracies included:
❌ pulse checks
❌ rescue breaths

a kitten is standing on its hind legs in a room with a caption . Alt: a kitten is standing on its hind legs saying "yah yah yaya!"

The good news:
📈 Hands-Only CPR was shown more often on TV than it happens in real life (58% vs ~40%) - this could help normalize bystander action!!

We reviewed 169 scripted TV episodes (2008–present) with cardiac arrest–related content.
👉 93 showed OHCA
👉 85 showed CPR
👉 54 depicted CPR by a layperson, so should have been Hands-Only CPR

a man smoking a cigarette with the words that 's what i was thinking too on the bottom Alt: GIF of Joey from Friends with text "that's what I was thinking too"

First, some context: Over 350,000 OHCAs happen each year in the U.S., and bystander CPR can double or triple survival. In teaching Hands-Only CPR in local communities, a lot of people incorrectly thought they should check for a pulse or give breaths. Could that be because of what they see on TV?

📺🫀 New study out in Circulation: Population Health & Outcomes! We analyzed how out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and Hands-Only CPR are depicted on scripted U.S. television: www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/... 🧵👇

YouTube video by CBS Sunday Morning State of denial: How insurance companies impact health care today

Here is the CBS Sunday Morning piece for which I was interviewed about findings from my book Coverage Denied. Health insurance barriers ration health care by inconvenience, imposing hurdles to get prescribed care with administratively burdensome appeals many can’t navigate. youtu.be/SRPOoPDN-7w?...

This is one of our favorites!

Zoe Weissman survived the Parkland shooting. Now she’s at Brown, and it happened again.

“Honestly, I'm really angry that this is happening to me all over again, and I'm just in shock.”

We’re failing our kids. A gun-sick nation. 🇺🇸 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

There is nothing an American president could do worse for his own people than starving the poor right before Thanksgiving.

Except for, I don’t know, lying about a plague and getting a million of his own citizens killed. Oh wait, let’s also not forget the time that he:

What a full circle moment thinking about watching TV together inspired me and Emily to have these important conversations many years ago #healthcommunication #siblinggrief

Challenging the notion that TV can be either informative or entertaining, the study found that viewers who saw these storylines were more likely than non-viewers to say they sought or shared information about organ donation and end-of-life planning.

Life & Death in The Pitt For nearly 25 years, our Hollywood, Health & Society program has served as a free and trusted resource to the entertainment industry, providing accurate information and access to experts for...

Grateful that I had the opportunity to consult on the @learcenter.bsky.social's latest study, which looked at the impact of The Pitt's organ donation and end-of-life care storylines on viewers: www.mediaimpactproject.org/thepitt.html

PA Judicial Elections are one of the Last Lines of Defense in US It may not be intuitive, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is one of the last remaining lines of defense against autocracy in the US. The three Supreme Court Justices up for retention, Christine Dono...

@pgh-health-science.bsky.social
@sarahross1.bsky.social @jaketomson.bsky.social @90for90.bsky.social
PA Judicial Elections are one of the Last Lines of Defense in the US
www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...

State supreme court battles move to Pennsylvania, where 3 Democratic justices hope to keep seats Republicans and Democrats have begun pouring money into an election this November for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

@pgh-health-science.bsky.social is working to get billboards up in the Pittsburgh area to educate about this issue. Please donate to maddogpac.com/cart if you want to help.

apnews.com/article/penn... supreme court battles move to Pennsylvania, where 3 Democratic justices hope to keep seats

The Pitt won Outstanding Drama Series at the #Emmys, and R. Scott Gemmill dedicated the award to healthcare workers:

"Respect them. Protect them. Trust them.”

🏆 www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't add how wonderful it was to work with Steph, and how much I am looking forward to future collaboration! #science #entertainmenteducation #TV #abortion #research #publichealth

We also found potential misinformation in about 10% of posts, both misinfo about abortion itself and abortion policy. These comments were significantly more likely to be anti-abortion. There could be a role for TV plotlines to address this misinfo!

For the comments themselves, the most frequent category was arguing with another poster (41.2%), but only about 2/3 of those were also coded as hostile. Could it be that people were engaging in respectful dialogue? We plan to do more in-depth qualitative work to find out!

We looked at clips on official channels, and were surprised that a majority of comments were from legal dramas (as opposed to medical). These channels had an average of 1.78 million subscribers - a huge audience!

Reading the comments: An exploratory quantitative analysis of YouTube comments in response to abortion plotlines on fictional television programs Previous research has found that exposure to abortion plotlines on fictional television programs may influence viewers’ knowledge about abortion, and …

Thrilled to share my latest manuscript with the amazing @stephherold.bsky.social where we analyzed comments posted in response to abortion plotline TV clips on YouTube. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...