Entertainment Education: A New Paradigm for Public Health

Whereas the presence of vaccine and other health-related misinformation on social media is well- documented, less is known about strategies to effectively counter the influence of this misinformation on health behavior. The practice of embedding factual health messages in popular television programs—entertainment education—has been shown to positively influence health-related knowledge, perceptions, and behavior. Synthesizing recent findings from a study of anti-vaccine posts on Facebook with prior research on entertainment education, this presentation will underscore the ways in which entertainment education may offer a novel mechanism to counter the growing spread health-related misinformation on social media.