Activities

Center for Media & Health focuses on:

• Entertainment-Education



Sound Effects
The Sound Effects campaign aimed at frequent clubbers (16 to 30 years old) in Amsterdam to prevent hearing loss in music venues. The cross media campaign was based on target group analysis and research and created attention and involvement through storytelling, the entertainment-education strategy and the use of the central and peripheral route of persuasion. The project team issued two parallel websites. One was the GO>OUT PLUG>IN site, a content-oriented website (www.gooutplugin.nl) with several items and gadgets (int.al. a hearing-loss test). The other one featured an internet soap series called SOUND and other items which would make visitors curious after more subject-related content. Both websites invited visitors to visit the other site with clickable items. SOUND was broadcasted on the internet in 9 weekly episodes. SOUND is accessible through the internet on www.sound-soap.nl.

Tips for Scripts
Tips for Scripts is a project modeled after the success of Hollywood, Health & Society. The project facilitates scriptwriters with so called ‘tip sheets’. A tip sheet contains data about a specific medical or lifestyle problem, a dramatic case example and contact data for content experts. The project has been set up in collaboration with Script-Studio, an Endemol company which provides the majority of scripts for television drama and soap series and with several Dutch national health organizations.

Internet drama series
Based on the successful collaboration for the internet soap SOUND, the CMH took the initiative for a new internet drama series which will address several life style and health topics. In this project there is a collaboration with different national health organizations. The series will experiment with cross media and trans media formats and will serve as an experimenting lab for addressing target groups of youngsters used to working with new media and social networks.

User as designer approach (Find Out!)
The television format Find Out! about exploring personal limitswithregard to sex, drugs and alcohol, is developed by and foryoungstersaged 16-24. They were trained and supervised by a professional production team whichspecializes in working with youngsters. Extensive formative and summative research was conducted for Find Out!. The 24 episode series was broadcast in2006 on The Box, a DutchMTV-like commercial music channel and is available on DVD.

 

Media Youngsters Team
During the Sound Effects campaign on hearing loss in music venues (see above), a team of students from different schools were invited and trained to film at music venues, interviewing celebs and making short clips for YouTube to enhance talking and thinking about the subject. This Media Youngsters Team produced a number of clips and interviews, several of which were selected for the www.gooutplugin.nl website. This way the message was attuned to the target group’s language and culture and was instrumental in reaching youngsters from different backgrounds and musical interests.

Health on Screen
The Health on Screen project had two objectives. The first objective was to find out how sexual behavior is being portrayed in popular soap and drama series in the Netherlands. The second objective was to develop a mutual frame of reference between health communicators and creative scriptwriters and producers to facilitate an effective collaboration in the future, based on theory and best practices. This resulted in three DVD’s and several research reports.

Netherlands on the Move
A television program targeting middle-aged and elderly people, with the purpose of helping them to do easy-to-do body exercises in the comfort of their own home, has been around since 1999. Netherlands on the Move is a collaboration project of several Dutch national health organizations and a public broadcaster. The CMH was asked to design the format, to negotiate the contracts and to coordinate the television production. The CMH has succeeded in keeping the program on screen over a period of more than ten years, working with different broadcasting companies and with a number of supporting national health organizations. Since it was first launched, Netherlands on the Move has been a showcase of good practices in collaboration and negotiation processes in television co-production, thanks to methods and procedures which were custom-designed by the CMH.

Entertainment-Education Curricula
As an independent institute, the CMH attained a subsidy from the Dutch Health Research Council (ZonMw) to design Entertainment-Education curricula for, and implement them in, professional training schools, universities and post-doc training courses. Curricula for EE teaching modules were custom-designed for, and implemented in, six different schools and universities. A core element of the teaching modules was a unique problem-oriented practical assignment, issued by different national health organizations which are actively supporting the modules, for example to design a mini-EE-campaign.

Day of the Soap
The CMH has been organizing an annual Day of the Soap since 2005. The Day of the Soap is a meeting place for health communicators, social change agents, media researchers, media professionals, producers and scriptwriters. The Day of the Soap welcomes scholars and field experts from the Netherlands as well as from abroad. The program addresses a special theme every year, around which keynotes and workshops are conducted. Many keynote speakers came from abroad, such as Arvind Singhal (University of Texas El paso), Bill Brown (Regent University), Doe Mayer (Annenberg School of Communication, USC), Lebo Ramafoko (Soul City, South Africa), Lizz Frost Yocum (BBC World Service Trust), Yerina Rock (Sexto Sentido, Nicaragua) and Sandra de Castro Buffington (Hollywood, Health & Society, LA).