The California Endowment announced a $500,000 grant for Obamacare education to Hollywood Health & Society, a program at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center that provides entertainment industry professionals with accurate and timely information for storylines on health and climate change. The 18-month grant will be used to inform television writers, producers, and others involved in television programming on Obamacare facts and implementation information in California and nationwide.

➻Read the full press release here

“Our experience has shown that the public gets just as much, if not more, information about current events and important issues from their favorite television shows and characters as they do from the news media and online resources,” said USC Annenberg professor Martin Kaplan, principal investigator of Hollywood, Health & Society since its start in 2001, and founding director of The Norman Lear Center. “This grant will allow us to ensure that industry practitioners have up-to-date, relevant facts on health care reform to integrate into their storylines and projects.”

Specifically, the grant will be used to conduct phone and in-person briefings and consultations with staff from various television shows, produce online resources, organize subject-matter expert panels, air public service announcements, and track Obamacare-related depictions on primetime and Spanish-language television.