Book Review

Evaluating Women's Health Messages: A resource book

N Engl J Med 1996; 335:359August 1, 1996

Article

Evaluating Women's Health Messages: A resource book
Edited by Roxanne Louiselle Parrott and Celeste Michelle Condit. 445 pp. Thousand Oaks, Calif., Sage, 1996. $32.95. ISBN: 0-7619-0057-8

Messages about health abound in our society. Emanating from surgeons general to soap operas, they influence attitudes and actions regarding health care. This book offers the chance to consider some of these messages and their implications.

Evaluating Women's Health Messages examines the way in which the mass media have dealt with women's reproductive health in such areas as abortion, drug use during pregnancy, contraception, childbirth, smoking, and menstruation. Each topic is addressed in two chapters: the first summarizes biomedical or social-science findings (or both), and the second analyzes the presentation of the topic in the popular media.

Most of the chapters are written by faculty and graduate students in communication and related fields. Of the 35 contributors, 2 are listed as having backgrounds in the health care professions, and 2 as having worked in the media; nearly all the contributors are women. The book is intended for health-communication scholars, students in health communication or women's studies, and health care practitioners.

For physicians, the sections on social-science findings and on media messages seem to have the most to offer. Although the sections providing biomedical information appear to contain few errors, they lack the depth — and sometimes the precision and balance — that physicians would be likely to seek.

The headings in the book make it easy to identify sections presenting social-science material of potential interest. One such section summarizes factors that motivate women to seek prenatal care and factors that inhibit them from doing so. Another section discusses providers of social support to women with breast cancer, and a third identifies factors that prevent women from undergoing mammography.

The chapters on media messages generally contain little jargon, and a background in health communication is not required to understand the material presented. As may be expected in such a collection, these chapters vary in the methodologic strength of the research they present and in the insight they provide. Each, however, contains something likely to provoke thought.

One particularly engaging chapter on media messages discusses how newspapers and magazines, as well as other media to some extent, have portrayed the use of illicit drugs in pregnancy. Entitled “The Drama of in Utero Drug Exposure: Fetus Takes First Billing,” the chapter emphasizes the point that media accounts have focused on the well-being of the fetus or child to the near exclusion of the mother's well-being (a tendency noted elsewhere in the book with regard to messages about alcohol and AIDS). The chapter shows how this portrayal set the stage for political and legal discussions of in utero drug exposure.

Another strong chapter considers messages from recent magazine and newspaper articles, broadcast programs, and advertisements about menarche, menstruation, and menopause. The authors observe that the popular media tend to portray menstruation and its cessation as fraught with symptoms and other problems, and the media also carry advertisements for products intended to address these problems. “In other words,” the authors conclude, “menstruation and menopause as `No Big Deal' is no big money.”

Other topics thoughtfully presented are the conflicting messages women receive about smoking, the portrayal of in vitro fertilization by the popular media, and the disproportionately meager attention the media and other sectors have paid to AIDS in women. Awareness of the messages discussed in this book may help us serve our patients. Time can be well spent browsing through this substantial book.

Barbara Gastel, M.D., M.P.H.
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4111