HMN 2024: Study explores public health themes in print and website versions of legacy media

A recent study by Assistant Professor Ann Gaba and MPH student Richard Bennett described the development of a data set for content analysis of public health discussions in print and website versions of legacy media.

For the study, published in JAMIA Open, Gaba and Bennett analyzed one year of content in 11 nationally-published magazines, creating a comprehensive database to compare the prevalence of public health themes over a year’s time.

The study extracted 2,558 unique documents from print issues and 6,440 from their web counterparts, identifying 17 distinct public health themes.

“Our research highlights that, while legacy media have been recognized for their reliability, they have not been thoroughly examined as sources of public health communication,” says Gaba.

The researchers emphasize that understanding the types of health content distributed through legacy media can improve communication strategies tailored to specific demographic groups. By leveraging themes and terms that resonate with various audiences, public health messages can be made more effective.

“This study serves as a model for applying informatics methods to analyze legacy media and refine public health communications, ultimately aiming to address disparities in health information dissemination,” says Bennett.

One of the intentions of this study was to produce a data set that could be utilized for secondary analysis of specific themes. The first paper based on secondary analysis of this data has been accepted for publication in JMIR—Formative Research.