Just when I'm trying to be optimistic about the state of American knowledge, along comes two studies that prove something else entirely.

My current disillusion comes courtesy of the Kaiser Foundation, which said in a study that awareness of the facts behind mother-child transmission of HIV jumped 46 percent after the data was featured in an episode of Grey's Anatomy.

They also found, in a separate study, that six out of every 10 episodes of TV's most popular prime-time shows over the past three years featured health related story lines, and that most of those story lines provided a fair amount of factual content. See both studies by clicking here.

“For better or worse, viewers do absorb the health information they see on TV, so it’s important for these shows to get it right,” said Victoria Rideout, vice president and director of the Program for the Study of Media and Health at the Kaiser Family Foundation and author of the Grey’s study. “This study shows the enormous potential for entertainment television to serve as a health educator.” 

As a professional couch potato, I'm torn: Do I feel gratified that I have yet another excuse for the hours I waste watching ER and Grey's?

Or do I wonder about a country where you have to put health information on a romance-drenched TV show before people will pay attention?

Check out some other results from the study by clicking below:

Other findings:

---The percentage of viewers who said it was “irresponsible for a woman who knows she is HIV positive to have a baby” dropped from 61% to 34% after the episode aired. Six weeks after broadcast, the figure had gone back up to 47%, still 14 percentage points below the pre-show level.

---About three in ten (29%) regular Grey’s viewers say they think the medical information on the show is ‘very’ accurate, while another 58% say it’s ‘somewhat’ accurate.

---Just under half (45%) of all regular viewers say they have learned something new about a health issue from the show.

---After the target episode aired, the health information about mother-to-child HIV transmission rates was referenced by at least 35 blogs. Viewers commented that the storyline “made me baul [sic] my eyes out,” or “still has my brain clicking and whirring.” Others said “Wow, 98%, I had no idea,” and “That stunned me too. I thought it was almost a certainty for the child to get it. Wow.”
How Healthy is Prime Time? An Analysis of Health Content in Popular Prime Time Television Programs:

---The most common health topic found in top-rated TV shows was an unusual illness or disease. This topic appeared more than four times as often as heart disease, five times as often as cancer, and 20 times as often as diabetes—all more prevalent medical conditions among the American populace.

---Health storylines are much more likely to focus on symptoms (65%), treatment (59%) and diagnosis (50%) than prevention (10%).

---One in ten of the top-rated shows (10%) included a storyline about access to care, such as a lack of insurance, or cutbacks in services at medical facilities.

---Because of differences in the types of shows they watch – more comedies, fewer medical shows – African American and Hispanic audiences are exposed to fewer health storylines than are viewers overall. There were 792 health storylines in the sample of shows from Nielsen’s overall top-ten shows, compared to 564 in the top-ten shows among African Americans, and 698 in the top-ten English-language shows among Hispanics.