In a new video from Health News Review, Dr. Sarah Gollust (University of Minnesota) discusses an analysis just released in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH).
The analysis examines the content of local TV news coverage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) during the first ACA open enrollment period (October 1, 2013 through April 19, 2014), when 10 million Americans gained insurance. This new analysis is relevant to the work of policymakers, health policy scholars, and enrollment advocates as they seek to understand the information environment to which Americans were exposed at this historic time of widespread coverage gains. The authors found that common source of news for Americans provided little public health–relevant substance about the ACA during its early implementation, favoring a political approach to news coverage of the law.
Watch the video below or read the accompanying Health News Review article here.
Access the AJPH article, "Local Television News Coverage of the Affordable Care Act: Emphasizing Politics Over Consumer Information."
The research highlighted here was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's SHARE program, which is managed by SHADAC. Learn more about Dr. Gollust's SHARE-funded research.