She works behind the scenes to add health-based storylines to shows like “90210,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Army Wives.”
Sandra de Castro Buffington sees herself as an inspirer, connecting research in public health to the entertainment industry, which reaches millions of people every day.
Last week, Buffington joined the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health to establish a new center that will carry out this line of work.
The Global Media Center for Social Impact, of which Buffington is a founding director, was launched last week and aims to bring attention to public health issues by increasing their representation in television and film.
Staff at the center will work with writers and producers in Hollywood, Bollywood and other entertainment centers around the world to integrate health issues into storylines, Buffington said.
She expects the center, located in the Life Sciences building, will be fully operational by early December.
The television shows that the center works with will include small visual cues such as health-related posters on sets, issue-oriented dialogues or multi-episode story arcs revolving around health issues.
The center uses shows’ websites and independent research firms to survey viewers. Answers provided on questionnaires enable the center to evaluate how much viewers learned from a show’s storyline. Staff at the center use this information to better develop future storylines, Buffington said.
In an episode of “Numb3rs,” a TV show that aired on CBS, Buffington helped writers craft a storyline about organ transplants. After the episode, more than 10 percent of viewers decided to sign up to donate organs, she said.
Buffington said public health experts sometimes find it difficult to get their messages across to large groups of people, and that the entertainment industry is an effective way to reach millions.
People tend to learn more from their favorite characters than from direct messages from experts, she added.
“The thing about storytelling is, we have no idea that we’re learning anything as it’s happening,” Buffington said. “We’re just entertained.”
Staff at the center also advocate for storylines about climate change, gender equality and racial justice because those are social issues related to public health, she said.
“This is very different to the finger wagging, ‘do good’ messaging that I think many people recoil from,” Buffington said.
She said she thinks stories with these topics, when told well, can change popular culture and society.
Buffington, project scientist Neal Baer and School of Public Health Dean Jody Heymann will work with 10 staff members at the center to inform television and movie writers and conduct evaluations on the effectiveness of their storylines.
“When we’re transported into stories, we lose track of time and forget our surroundings,” Buffington said. “We have much higher knowledge gains, attitude changes and changes in behavioral intentions.”
Answers to questionnaires given to viewers show that plots focusing on health issues can actually convince viewers to change their behavior, Buffington said.
She said more than 11 percent of viewers of a “90210″ episode about a gene increasing breast cancer risk called their doctors after watching the show to ask if they needed genetic screening.
Tessa Verhoef, a student studying environmental health engineering at the School of Public Health, said she had not heard of the new center, but would like to learn more about it.
Verhoef said she thought she could benefit from working at the center because it will send messages about health to the general public.
Buffington said she sees the center as a free resource for writers and producers who want to tell compelling stories that educate viewers.
“All I do is help (writers) make their stories more compelling by making them more realistic and more accurate,” she said. “By doing that, they meet their goals. And by (meeting their goals), they’re meeting mine.”