Eager to get out the message about H1N1 vaccine, public health officials across the United States went looking for receptive audiences in dark, crowded places where violence is often witnessed, public health is rarely discussed, and unhealthy foods are consumed in abundance: movie theaters.
Several cities and states nationwide decided to show public service announcements on the movie screens, a place often reserved for Hollywood trivia and requests to turn off mobile phones. Public health departments throughout the country have specifically designed interventions such as these to access a broader public.
"A lot of the people we are trying to reach go to movies. It's just a good medium to reach large numbers of people," said Barbara Cole, director of disease control for the Riverside County, CA, Department of Public Health, in an interview with the San Bernardino Press Enterprise on January 2, 2010. City and state officials in Illinois have used similar strategies, scheduling commercials about H1N1 prevention and vaccination on more than 1,000 movie screens throughout the state that were scheduled to run through the end of February, 2010.
Other cities and states that are showing public service announcements in movie theaters include Los Angeles, Philadelphia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Arizona. Many efforts are targeted at the population at large, while other jurisdictions are reaching out to teen and young adult populations. Cole noted in the newspaper interview that, "Teenagers and young adults are among those being targeted by the campaign. They are also one of the groups being targeted for the H1N1 vaccine." In Chicago, the public service announcements have aired before showings of "New Moon" and "2012," movies expected to draw particularly young audiences.
