Question

Provide an electronic media device that shows your interest in public health, then write a 5-sentence paragraph explaining the media device.

For example, a twitter or other social media account, or an infographic you took a picture of, or a public health ad that you found interesting and allowed you to enter the field.

Answer 1

NEWS MEDIA AND THE NATIONAL PUBLIC AGENDA(Television)

The unfolding news coverage of HIV/AIDS provides a good example of how an important health issue may be invisible to the public eye until the media bring it to light. The more coverage a topic receives in the news, the more likely it is to be a concern of the public.

The first publicly documented cases of AIDS were reported in the June 5, 1981, issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report . The publication provided five case histories of previously healthy, young (ages 29 to 36) homosexual men from the Los Angeles area who developed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), an affliction usually seen in severely immunodepressed patients, and a myriad of other opportunistic infections.

During this time, news media coverage of the illnesses that appeared to be affecting homosexual men was limited. According to an analysis conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation (1996), it was only in August 1982 that the New York Times brought readers up to date on an emerging and puzzling health crisis in the homosexual community.