The “Reality” of Health: Reality Television and the Public Health (PDF; 208 KB)
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
“A number of reality shows deal directly with aspects of health and medicine, portraying ‘real people’ and ‘real health professionals’ involved in plastic surgery, weight loss, urgent care, smoking cessation, and so on. The purpose of this paper is to describe the nature of these shows, provide an overview of the messages they convey about health and medicine, and explore some possible implications of these shows for audience awareness and knowledge. In addition to the shows where health is the primary focus, many other reality shows are tangentially related to health issues, or have an occasional focus on a health topic. The implications of these shows are also discussed.”

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