The truth is, celebrity news stories attract a lot of eyeballs. So it’s not surprising that media outlets continue to use that angle for stories on health and disease, with headlines like “14 Celebrities with Breast Cancer” or “Stars Who Have Battled Cancer.”
What is surprising is that it may not be what patients actually want to read when they’re looking for health information.
“The assumption is that celebrities have the better effect,” said Jessica Fishman, PhD, a behavioral and social scientist in Penn’s department of Psychiatry, who led a new study that took a deeper dive into the different “messengers” used in health stories. “Turns out that patients really wanted to hear the perspective of ordinary patients like them and doctors. They could have also chosen many celebrity-focused articles, but they didn’t.”
When the researchers surveyed 89 women in an oncology clinic at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center, all with different stages of breast cancer, they came back with results that even the reviewers of the study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion had a hard time believing. After being given a few details on a number of articles, covering the same health topics, but with different messengers, patients were significantly more likely to choose stories with patients and doctors over ones with celebrities or religious leaders.
Knowing patients rely on the media for health information, the researchers wanted to see who exactly they wanted to hear it from. Having this info could help guide health providers and increase the likelihood it would be read. Nearly 97 percent of patients chose at least one article with a doctor or patient as a messenger, whereas only 58 percent chose a story with celebrities.
“The reviewers believed that these results had to be wrong, but they couldn’t find a flaw in the study,” Fishman said. “Celebrities have to be more valued than these findings suggest, they thought.”
Whatever skepticism people have about the results would seem warranted. Not only do we live in a celebrity-focused culture, but, for better or worse, celebrities have also long been influential messengers of health news who patients look to for advice.
The number of people ordering at-home HIV tests shot up after the actor Charlie Sheen revealed he was positive, a study in Prevention Science showed. Angelina Jolie’s double mastectomy reveal sent many women to get screened for the BRCA gene. Another study showed that Jolie helped improved public awareness about reconstructive breast surgery.
“When one of the most beautiful women in the world comes forward with her medical decision-making, it’s a really important conversation starter, and gives individuals a lot information to take to their doctors,” said Susan Domchek, MD, director of Penn’s Basser Center for BRCA on Good Morning America in 2015 for a story on the so-called “Angelina Effect.”
Many have also said that actress Jenny McCarthy’s stance against vaccinations added fuel to the anti-vaccine movement.
There are important differences here, though. Other studies have examined similar effects of celebrities as messengers, but they don’t compare it to another messenger. Also, many focus on one celebrity, which makes it harder to generalize what impact celebrities can have – the effect of one may not hold up for another, the authors noted. This study teased patients with headlines that generically mentioned “celebrities,” with no specific star mentioned, because these headlines have become a common part of the media landscape.
The work is part of a series of studies from Fishman on how to better understand and ultimately improve cancer communications and general health education.
“Instead of ordering the celebrity-focused magazines, they may want to have some other magazines that they overlooked that take on the provider or patient perspective,” said Fishman, who is also part of Penn’s Annenberg School of Communication. “You could also think about the results being applicable to clinical brochures or other attempts of communication. They could be framing their messages in terms of what the doctors think would be helpful for you to know or patients sharing their stories. That may be a good way to grab their attention.”
Much of the literature out there and people in the news industry say celebrity involvement is key, Fishman said, but if “we want to communicate effectively, then we might question the promise placed in these messengers. It looks like that promise might be oversold.”
“Maybe they are good for certain situations, but I wouldn’t have unbridled enthusiasm,” she added.
This isn’t the first time Fishman has found that patients’ wants don’t match up with what they’re seeing in the news. One example is end-of-life care and its depiction in the media.
There is a lot of great care that people can receive as a cancer patient at the end of life, but it’s greatly underutilized, Fishman said. “It’s basically taboo to talk about end-of-life care in cancer news coverage,” she said. “It’s very rarely done.”
But she said, based on another one of her studies, patients do in fact want to know more.
“It’s been this assumption that in the news media, that you want to have an optimistic perspective and focus on cancer cure reporting, but that doesn’t match the preference of patients so far,” said Fishman, who spent time in newsrooms, shadowing editors and photojournalists, for her book, “Death Makes the News: How the Media Censor and Display the Dead,” set to publish this month. “But when you give them a chance to hear what a good end-of-life experience can be like, they are actually very interested in that information.”