Integrating Journalism Into Health Promotion: Creating and Disseminating Community Narratives.

Media coverage of mental health and other social issues often relies on episodic narratives that suggest individualistic causes and solutions, while reinforcing negative stereotypes. Community narratives can provide empowering alternatives, serving as media advocacy tools used to shape the policy debate on a social issue. This article provides health promotion researchers and practitioners with guidance on how to develop and disseminate community narratives to broaden awareness of social issues and build support for particular programs and policy solutions. To exemplify the community narrative development process and highlight important considerations, this article examines a narrative from a mental health consumer-run organization. In the narrative, people with mental health problems help one another while operating a nonprofit organization, thereby countering stigmatizing media portrayals of people with mental illness as dangerous and incompetent. The community narrative frame supports the use of consumer-run organizations, which are not well-known and receive little funding despite evidence of effectiveness. The article concludes by reviewing challenges to disseminating community narratives, such as creating a product of interest to media outlets, and potential solutions, such as engaging media representatives through community health partnerships and using social media to draw attention to the narratives.

A health promotion program at a Japanese newspaper undergoing restructuring.

Occupational health activities based on a health promotion philosophy and focused on primary and secondary prevention were introduced at a Japanese newspaper company where restructuring had occurred. Japanese metabolic syndrome diagnostic standards were used to determine changes in certain lifestyle disease risk factors over 10 years. The amount of change from 1998 to 2007 was determined, and two groups (i.e., 1998 and 2007) were compared using paired t-tests. Results suggested that the occupational health activities focused on primary prevention had been effective. The authors concluded that, in situations where industrial change and corporate restructuring are occurring, occupational health activities based on a health promotion philosophy and focused on primary and secondary prevention are more effective than diagnostic activities and other types of health management focused on tertiary prevention.

Bringing nursing to the public.

For the past 5 years, an unusual program has been evolving in the University of Basel's Institute of Nursing Science master's program in Basel, Switzerland. A special course designed to help nurses master public communication skills requires students to play the roles of journalist, exhibition curator, conference organizer, radio reporter, and news producer. Two faculty members, an experienced radio and newspaper journalist and a nurse scientist, teach and support the students. By developing their competence in media relations, participants prepare themselves to tackle the course's long-term goal of bringing the nursing profession into the public eye.

A journal of histochemistry as a forum for non-histochemical scientific societies.

Histochemical techniques are widely applied in biomedical research and, during the last twenty years, they were among the methods used in more than 590,000 scientific articles in indexed journals. However, a very small percentage of these papers were published in strictly histochemical journals. A possible strategy to widen the audience of the histochemical journals making them attractive to non-histochemist authors might be to publish and make open-access available the proceedings of the meetings and conferences of valued scientific societies whose fellows use microscopy and histochemistry in their experimental activity. In the last years' experience of the European Journal of Histochemistry, this approach was effective to increase the number of published articles on stem cells and development, connective tissue and nerve cell biology.

Clinicians and journalists responding to disasters.

OBJECTIVE: Mass casualty events pose dilemmas for community clinicians, often challenging their existing clinical toolkits. However, few clinicians were trained to be experts in explaining the unfolding events to the community, creating resources, and interacting with journalists. The objective of this article is to explain knowledge, skills, and attitudes that mental health professionals need to consider when working with journalists, especially those covering children affected by disaster. METHODS: In service of these objectives, this article reviews controversies, evidence, and best practices to facilitate effective collaborations and consultations with journalists. Advice includes information on how to be a good source to journalists. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians can ethically and effectively help journalists tell accurate and compelling stories about the psychological effects of disasters when they understand and respect the aims, culture, and ethics of journalism.

Noticias sobre suicidio en los medios de comunicación. Recomendaciones de la OMS / Reporting on suicide. WHO recommendations for the Media

La exposición inadecuada en los medios de comunicación sobre suicidios puede producir un efecto contagio o efecto Werther, mientras que determinadas características adecuadas pueden tener un efecto protector o efecto Papageno. Por tanto, los medios de comunicación pueden contribuir a la prevención del suicidio. Por ello, la OMS ha elaborado tres documentos con una serie de recomendaciones dirigidas a los profesionales de los medios de comunicación, para el tratamiento de las noticias relacionadas con el suicidio. Sin embargo, solo se ha traducido al español el primero, ambos tienen solapamientos y poseen una estructura diferente. Esto supone que los profesionales de los medios de comunicación de habla hispana en general, y de España en particular, difícilmente pueden tener un acceso a estas recomendaciones de la OMS de una forma clara y concisa. El objetivo de este trabajo fue la elaboración y provisión de un texto único y sintético que recogiera las recomendaciones de estos documentos. Para su creación se siguió un procedimiento formal y estructurado, que aunó criterios científicos y lingüísticos. El texto final contiene las recomendaciones agrupadas en tres categorías: "qué hacer", "qué no hacer" y "otras recomendaciones". Este documento puede ser de gran utilidad para los profesionales de los medios de comunicación, para actividades formativas de difusión de tales recomendaciones con finalidad preventiva y para la investigación (AU)

Inappropriate reporting on suicide in the media may lead to a contagious effect or "Werther effect", while appropriate characteristics may have a protective effect or "Papageno effect". Therefore, the media can contribute to the prevention of suicide. For this reason, the WHO has developed three documents with recommendations for media professionals about how to report on suicide. However, only the first one has been translated into Spanish, they have overlaps and have a different structure. Therefore, Spanish-speaking media professionals in general, and Spanish ones in particular, can hardly have access to these WHO recommendations displayed in a clear and concise manner. The objective of this work was the elaboration and provision of a single and concise text that includes the recommendations of these documents. A formal and structured procedure was followed, combining scientific and linguistic criteria. The final text contains the recommendations grouped into three categories: "what to do", "what not to do" and "other recommendations". This document can be very useful for media professionals, for training activities to disseminate such recommendations for preventive purposes, and for research (AU)

The Israel Press Council: review and suggestions for improvement.

The aim of this essay is to review the work of the Israel Press Council. The essay considers the history of the Press Council, analysing the way it has developed, its work, and how it reached its current status. It is argued that the existing situation is far from satisfactory, and that the media should advance more elaborate mechanisms of self-control, empowering the Press Council with greater authority and equipping it with substantive ability to sanction.

Science information in the media: an academic approach to improve its intrinsic quality.

The lay audience expresses a clear demand for scientific information, particularly when health and welfare are involved. For most people science is what they learn from the media. The need for good scientific journalism is pressing, to bridge the gap between the slow pace of science and the fast-moving and concise nature of successful mass communication. This academic postgraduate course was established by the Department of Pharmacological Sciences to train mediators to improve the quality of lay scientific dissemination. The programme focuses on teaching a method of selecting, analysing, understanding, mediating and diffusing scientific information to lay people. The course explores the theoretical and practical aspects of methods, techniques and channels of scientific communication. Case studies, practical exercises, and stages complement the theoretical curriculum. The teaching focus is on reducing the asymmetry between scientists and the public. The different backgrounds of students and the spread of topics are major challenges.