Teaching Health Literacy Using Popular Television Programming: A Qualitative Pilot Study.

BACKGROUND Teaching of health and medical concepts in the K-12 curriculum may help improve health literacy. PURPOSE The purpose of this project was to determine acceptability and preliminary efficacy of pilot implementation of a health literacy curriculum using brief clips from a popular television program. METHODS Participants included 55 ninth-grade students in a low-income school with a high proportion of minority students. The curriculum used three brief interspersed segments from the television show ER to teach basic topics in cardiology. After the 30-minute experimental curriculum, students completed open-ended surveys which were coded qualitatively. RESULT The most common codes described "enjoyment" (N=28), "acquisition of new knowledge" (N=28), "informative" (N=15), "interesting" (N=12), and "TV/video" (N=10). We found on average 2.9 examples of medical content per participant. Of the 26 spontaneously-generated verifiable statements, 24 (92.3%) were judged as accurate by two independent coders (κ=0.70, P=.0002). DISCUSSION Use of brief segments of video material contributed to the acceptability of health education curricula without detracting from students' acquisition of accurate information. TRANSLATION TO HEALTH EDUCATION PRACTICE Health education practitioners may wish to include brief clips from popular programming to motivate students and provide context for health-related lessons.