Scholar to discuss ‘health accuracy’ in TV plots at Rice lecture

CONTACT: Franz Brotzen
PHONE: 713-348-6775
EMAIL: franz.brotzen@rice.edu

Scholar to discuss ‘health accuracy’ in TV plots at Rice lecture

Health issues are common plot devices on U.S. television shows. But how realistic are their depictions of illness and its consequences?

Sandra de Castro Buffington, the director of the Norman Lear Center’s Hollywood, Health & Society program at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, will address the issue April 7 at Rice University.

Buffington’s lecture, “Is Television Good for Our Health?: Working with Hollywood’s Scriptwriters to Increase Health Accuracy in TV Story Lines,” will begin at 6 p.m. in the auditorium of Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main Street. For directions, go to www.rice.edu/brc/map.shtml.

The event is organized by the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality as part of the Gray/Wawro Lectures in Gender, Health and Well-Being. It is free and open to the public.

For more on the Gray/Wawro lecture series, go to http://cswgs.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=303.