Field Placement: The Media Project
Location: North Hollywood, CA
Preceptor: Melissa Havard
Student Name: Diana Farid M.D.
Year: 2004

The underlying goal of my MPH training is to gain a deeper understanding of entertainment-education and how I can play a role in it to promote health and social change. The Media Project served as my first practical experience in an entertainment-education advocacy non-profit organization. My over-arcing field studies goal was to discover how an organization like this functions and how a physician can play a role in it. I worked at The Media Project between July 15th and October 16th, 2004. It is located in north Hollywood. The following report will review the specific activities that helped me reach this goal.

The Media Project, is a program of Advocates for Youth, an advocacy group based in Washington D.C., that creates programs and advocates for policies that help improve youth reproductive and sexual health. The Media Project (TMP) offers entertainment professionals up-to-date information on sexual and reproductive health information. It does this with outreach directly to shows, writers and producers via one o n one meetings, larger topic specific briefings and monthly information packets as well as a “hotline” for entertainment professionals to call directly. TMP uses the resources of the research department of Advocates for Youth and experts for their information. It also serves as a connection between experts and industry writers and producers. Finally, TMP holds an annual awards ceremony called the SHINE (Sexual Health IN Entertainment) Awards recognizing TV shows that serve to promote sexual and reproductive health in their storylines.

My activities fell under the following broad categories: 1. Serving as a physician resource to TMP (creating new information files on various sexual and reproductive health topics, interacting with show writers/producers to answers questions, recruiting other experts, creating a file of storyline ideas based on my and my colleagues’ clinical practice and serving as a physician expert on a TV talk show), 2. Organization of the SHINE awards (entrant judging, donor solicitation, invitation editing, celebrity recruitment, and coordination of the silent auction), and 3. Secretarial/Administrative work.

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